Getting Into Needlelace

I'd always loved the look of needlelace, but had never had a go. So when I was asked to do a needlelace sample for my City and Guilds course, I was eager to get started.

I love doing stumpwork, and needlace features heavily in a lot of traditional stumpwork pieces, so I had always been keen to try it out. Using my design work from earlier in the course, I set about adapting the design for needlelace and drawing it up onto paper. With needlelace, if you want to finish up with one piece you need to plan your design that way from the beginning, so I drew my tulip design, making sure that each flower or stem was touching the next.

To prepare for stitching you need a pad to work on, which can simply be three layers of calico fabric stitched together. You then put your design on the pad and cover it with sticky plastic. However, before you start the pretty stitches you need to lay down a cordonnet (a thread following the outline). Once this is done you're all ready to start with the lovely needlelace stitches.

I wanted to take the opportunity to try out as many stitches as possible, so I tried out a different stitch on each section.

1. Single Brussels

2. Corded single Brussels

3. Double Brussels

4. Corded double Brussels

5. Triple Brussels

6. Wheel filling

7. Ceylon stitch

8. Pea stitch

9. Pea stitch variation with scalloped cordonette edging

10. Twisted single Brussels

Some of the stitches were of course trickier than others, and I had made it rather difficult for myself with the shapes I had designed. Something square would have been so much easier. But all in all I was pretty pleased with the result, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it

And here is the finished piece:

Moving on to more needlelace

Later on in the next course I was pleased to get the opportunity to try out some more needlelace. I had to try some traditional style stumpwork, so this was the perfect opportunity to do some more needlelace. I picked a traditional style flower and got cracking with my needlelace, this time I needed to wire the edges of the leaves, so that they would hold their shape when attached.

I had also always wanted to try doing needlelace around a ball, as is often seen in traditional stumpwork, especially for oranges, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. Paper balls are used, which I then coloured with felt tip pen. Single Brussels stitch is then worked all over the ball. This is so fiddly, and I definitely should have started on smaller balls as it takes forever to work! But I finally got there and was pleased that I'd had the opportunity to try it out. I loved doing this piece.

Further along the course I did a study of Italian embroidery. Needlelace features heavily here, and that really cemented my love for all things needlelace. But more about that later on.

The next part of my journey lead me to something else new to me, fabric dyeing. To read about it please click here: Having a Go at Fabric Dyeing (claireharveyembroidery.com)