Dress from Hell

When I was little, I was surprised when this crochet dress was sent to me from a distant Grandma I had only seen a few times. It was very scratchy and heavy, I wondered if she had made it for one of her other grand daughters who lived near her who refused to wear it! This is from the 1960's, made with barbed wire, sorry, early acrylic I think. Not something you would put a child in near an open fire.

My mother made a nylon slip to wear underneath it but that only served to make it turn static and make it more horrible than ever. Only a few years ago I got my revenge when I decided the memory was not one of the pleasant ones I wanted to keep from childhood and I threw it in the bin. I had offered it to a costume museum but they said they had a yellow crochet dress from that period already! This photo popped up during a clear out of my computer so I now inflict this dress from hell on my readers.

Working colours into Cluny/Beds style Muaiga lace.

Working colours into Cluny/Beds style Muaiga lace using plaits and leaf tallies.

There are more technical points in multicoloured lace than in white. The white threads are interchangable and can be swapped, crossed, thrown and added at the place you need them to be. When colours are added, the paths they take have to be considered to avoid a spaghetti of mixed up colours later on in the design.

In many of my designs there are often coloured threads meeting at a join which may not need to continue and need to be thrown out, or to be carried to a further pin without showing. Photo shows the colour change whipped plaits.

How to handle these extra threads?

Simply double up the pairs to make thicker plaits and throw threads out - this leaves thread ends unsecured along the plait and any unwanted colours will show in the plait.

Tie them off and sew in the ends - knots can interfere with a join and leave little lumps.

I prefer to hide them inside a whipped plait - not really a plait but with the same thickness it disguises the amount of thread being carried, and is barely noticeable in a plaited ground. Picots can still be made on the whipped plait and this can be used in both white and coloured lace.

There are two ways of making these, my preferred method is to whip using a blanket type stitch, or to wrap the worker around the treads and add a stitch every few twists. The sewn method tensions on every wrap, the second method has to be maintained along the length without the stitches.

Throwing out, or removing threads, is best done one at a time, laid to the back and only cut off after the plait is secured. Hold the thread in tension above the plait, lay scissors flat, cut close. The tension is used to pull on the thread a little so it wants to pop back inside the whipped plait as soon as it is cut.

The opposite is used when cutting a thread from the body of a tally, tension can pull the tally out of shape, even when secured at both ends, so cut close and carefully stroke with finger nail sideways to encourage the thread end to slip back inside the tally.

The video is available on my you tube channel using this link - https://youtu.be/K3mWlnHsq9M

This method can also be used to strengthen and stiffen plaits where a degree of support is needed, and picots can be easily worked along the length of the whipped plait.

Flower Bed with Beaded Edge

The Flower Bed Cartouche pattern in the previous post was adapted to create a similar flower bed, this time with a few more techniques, threads, and many more beads. 

To avoid using a lot pairs of passive pairs around the edge, I introduced a thick crochet thread which changed colour every inch, and had a pink lurex thread running through it.  This thick thread worked with a standard size thread to make a pair.  I added a row of large seed beads down the middle of the four passive pairs by using two workers, each worker having only two passive pairs to cloth stitch through.  

Abandoning the traditional white thread, I used a rather juicy looking sap green thread, a vintage Sylco reel coming in about 29 wraps per centimeter, so about the same as a Finca 40.

Each tally flower has a plaited circle between the tally and the beaded flowerette. The flowerette has a larger seed bead in the center.  The tallies are made with DMC variegated machine cotton, about 30 wraps per centimeter. 

The weight of the beads could be problematical if thrown out threads were not fully secured, so for this piece, I used a double knot to secure them before throwing out.  This meant that the piece is worked wrong side upwards, to avoid the knots, no matter how small, being seen along the edges.  

The video tutorial for the Seed Bead Flowerette is to be found on my You Tube channel here

https://youtu.be/6HEan966E5w?si=ohbxYMqdM0qAIuZS