The proposed topic for this next project is collections.
My immediate reaction was to consider the collection of antique lace bobbins which belonged to my aunt with which she worked beautiful pieces of handmade lace.A small selections of my lace bobbins:
I really loved the above and playing around with the bobbins to find pleasing patterns but then came to realise that these are beautifully worked in fine crochet! I needed to think again!
I still had plenty to chose from and kept coming back to this piece, given to me by my aunt:
I considered interpreting the lace through cut work, I needed to transfer the design onto a suitable fabric perhaps cotton organdie [ as it doesn't fray]. Unfortunately the transfer pen did not give a clear enough outline from which to work. I persevered with the cotton organdie and decided to trace the motif onto tissue paper and machine stitch through to the fabric. Having removed the tissue paper I worked a running stitch around the edge of the motif. When I reached the bars I took the thread across the space 3 times without catching the base fabric and then adding a buttonhole stitch to cover the bars.
- paper girl cutouts and lace fragments were applied to the background using Bondaweb followed by
- the machine stitched outline of the girls
- and finally the printed image laid over the top.