you guys remember olney handkerchief, right? I confess I sometimes forget about our olney handkerchief for months at a time...
anyway.
since my last update on this project (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) I have actually made some progress. today I even moved the lace up another notch - which incidentally meant it was time to free the first bit of lace from the last few of its pins! I do love unpinning. I try not to fiddle with the lace too much after it's free - must keep it clean - but... just a little won't hurt...
Doing a bucks edging sample to practice kat stitch before doing Paris. Somehow, remembering to do half stitch not cloth stitch for the pearls is the hardest.
I was scrolling through my own blog today (as one does) and realized I never did a proper round-up post for Rosemary. So this is a bit of a retrospective I suppose! Click through for my notes on the project if you're interested - otherwise, I hope you like the pictures!
This is certainly one of my favorite pieces that I've done. I think it really turned out beautifully! But, it also stands out in my mind for having a foul, foul, truly foul number of broken threads that had to be replaced in the middle of the work. I think at least 6? The ideal number of course being zero. At the time, this sucked. I had no idea what I was doing - you can see in one of the pictures that I was referencing three different books at one point trying to figure out how the heck to fix the dang things. But in hindsight, it was valuable experience! I got a lot of practice splicing in new threads, and I also stopped being so afraid of it happening. (Though of course one still likes to avoid it...)
I am not sure why so many threads decided to part company with their fellows, but I have some theories. I'm fairly sure it's not because of putting too much tension on the thread, because it didn't snap under pressure so much as just kinda fray and drift apart. My prime suspect is the bobbins - something about this style of bobbin makes it really hard (for me, at least) to prevent them rolling wildly all over the pillow during the work, which runs the risk of untwisting the thread. This is very sad for me because I love these bobbins. But I haven't given up hope that I can still make them work. They seem to roll less on my box pillow, so maybe they can just be reserved for that pillow. Also, I'm on that "it was a bad batch of thread" copium 😅
This was also the first time I tried mounting the finished lace onto fabric, which I was very worried about screwing up but it wound up not being so bad! Sewing is definitely not my strong suit, but I got through it and am pleased with the result.
Technical Notes
Pattern: "Rosemary" from A Visual Introduction to Bucks Point Lace by Geraldine Stott
Thread: Egyptian cotton 80/2 in bright white
Gimps: 8 ply of the base thread
Pins: .5 mm pins for the picots and motifs; .8mm pins for the ground and footside
Picots: 5 twists
Started: September 14, 2020
Completed: August 11, 2021
(If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't heard enough about this project, you can check out the "rosemary" tag on my blog to see my other posts about it.)
probably could have done a better job photographing this process but, I actually managed to make enough progress that I could move the lace up the pillow a notch! I maybe could/should have worked a little farther before doing this, but eh. I'm sure it's fine!
Goodness it has really been forever hasn't it. That's ok... sometimes you go into a lull with a craft, that doesn't mean it's over and done with forever. And while the handkerchief project isn't exactly racing along, I have made some progress with it over the last months. Hoping to get a bit more done today as well!
