This design is inspired by a brooch made by Boucheron around 1900. Originally made in enamels, precious and semi precious gems and gold, it has been a favourite of mine for a long time.
This bobbin lace version was created by lacing over a drawing I made with the restrictions of bobbin lace in mind. I sized this design to fit a 28 cm disc block on my block pillow, this allowed for the size of the thread I wanted to use, and the stitches I planned. It only just fitted! From wing tip to end of scroll on one side is 24cm.
I like to use my favourite white Egyptian cotton thread with a wraps per centimeter of 28 for all the first time makings of new designs. This helps me to judge the pinholes and how many bobbins I need to fill spaces.
Unfortunately, I didn't have any gemstones or gold lying about, so I used sequins, beads and sparkly thread.
The stitches I planned on my original drawing had to be changed as I worked through the piece. This can happen if I need to un-lace a section because I am not happy with the result. Pinholes often get moved during this process, and this means that the pricking, when taken off the pillow, is of little use in creating a new pricking to remake the piece because of all the abandoned pinholes.
I worked the antennae first, using the same threads to work down the body, adding sequin eyes, and rows of seed beads down the abdomen. As I worked the sides of the body, I added magic threads around the edge pins, this made it easier to add the wing pairs later. Previously, before I knew about magic threads, I would hang all the bobbins down both sides of butterflies, and work with a pile of waiting bobbins on one side of the pillow!
Once a side is completed, the second side is worked as a mirror image of the first, I can see what stitches to use, and I make little notes for myself on the card about adding twists, pairs, how many passives etc.
This design used several different lace techniques, taken from different styles of lace. It could have been made in simple cloth stitch in different shades to recreate the original more faithfully, but this presented an opportunity to go a little bit over the top.
The old favourites, half and cloth stitch are used of course, a pin under 4 edge for smooth sides, the antennae and swirls used a pin under 4 combined with a turning stitch. All the edges had a thick glitter passive added to give a central vein of sparkle.
The body features a chevron made with thick glitter thread and a thick white thread, this gave a line of dotted 'v' shapes inside the passive pairs along the edges.
I used little trails to recreate the sections of the enamel on the original, filling each little section with sequins, spiders, roseground, tallies, half stitch and Slincas filled with large seed beads.
The challenge in this design, was to see the paths of the threads as they were needed for different stitches and to see how the pairs from different sections could be worked in parallel to avoid lots of knotting into those narrow trails.
Most of the techniques are in my Youtube channel as little tutorials, so the video for this design is of it being unpinned.
My video here
.pdf is available on my facebook page
