It’s that time of the year

In the previous post I said I have no valid pictures of my first ordered christmas work. It sort of encouraged me to go and search for all the pictures in my folders. And after two days of search I managed to find some decent enough to go public with (sadly a couple of them are lost for ever).

Anyhow it would be so nice to have that kind of decorations on your christmas tree. In my case that is impossible because I have furry assistant that does not approve any of it. He always blames the aliens and stares at me with the most innocent kitty eyes. Putting that all aside, working on pictures I started to drool how nice and magical it would look on actual christmas tree. Thinking to myself, why would I keep that only to myself, why wouldn’t I rather share that with everyone?

Only requirement my customer had in the order was that I have to use silver metallic thread. And thru that I found out my eyes are not invincible. Working with metallic thread that reflects back light, and you do have to be precise, which means you do strain your eyes quite a bit. Lesson learned. So anyone that would like to decorate your tree this way please be nice to everyone and choose white linen thread. It will look just as cool and there will be added some vintage vibe with some serious class.

Are you ready?

Lets start with the first couple of boring ones that were made exactly by patterns. At the beginning I was so insecure and unrelaxed.

With this next one I started noticing that shapes are not very well thought out. And I need to relax my work in any possible way. Being too stressed out about exact position of pins and never satisfied with mirroring halves of the design ( I know, I know, I already stopped).

Convincing myself to go ahead and finish these next two patterns, that look good on the paper, but I had a hunch, that they will be too cramped when finished. O boy was I right about that. In the whole order these two were the hardest to even finishing them (in both cases I almost backed off in the middle). This made me realize, lace should never be too heavy. Lace is something that is airy and subtle, just like snowflakes.

All this thinking and moralizing around lace made me research new techniques from Europe, mostly German, French and Italian, I was intrigued especially with lacing technique Cantu. Cantu is a form of tape lace, what surprissed me is that it is very free and you are not determined where pins should go, you kind of stand there on your own and you call your own choices. That most definitely was not my strong point. Starting with the easy German patterns, that got me thinking about the general workflow, which should be easy and looking intricate. Here we have one design made in two different ways. Looking nothing alike.

Next two I like the most from the German patterns. Snowflake which is absolutely perfect and first heart design that I actually liked.

Now here comes something that made me proud of myself. Here I tried shyly stepping into Cantu technique with absolutely untypical design. Since this whole design is prety heavy I somehow tried to figure out how to make it work. The outer edge of the heart was made with enormous amount of improvisation and something I saw on one of the French websites. Despite all the heaviness it looks very good and is somehow well balanced design. End result sort of reminds me of Christ’s Heart which would also work very well as a “heavy duty” lace applique.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Working my way through that order I somehow managed to think about the perfect Christmas tree, what is it that should not miss on it? Well of course it is an angel, and in my eyes one is not enough. There must be at least wishful three, who are going to call all the others to join the party. Still struggling with a lack of ease, I decided to really start working on Cantu technique. I took my time and after a week of practice there were some really good results, which shows well on the angel that prays.

Angel in combination with copper metallic thread bugged me with the question, how to manipulate different color threads through the pattern without compromising the shape or colour scheme. Therefore I went with the easiest patterns I could find. Honestly I was satisfied with results and already thinking how to improvise in much more complicated patterns.

With next two I tested myself if I perhaps changed my mind on too busy and heavy patterns. The answer is no. I don’t like neither of them. Bobbin lace needs to be to certain extent simple and well thought out, especially when it comes to patterns with more different components. OMG sometimes I feel like an idiot that doesn’t know when to stop (my sincere apologies on that).

Coming close to an end it struck me that I haven’t made not even one extremely traditional design. From anthropological and ethnological point of view Slovenians fall for hearts and carnations. That is one of the most common traditional designs used through the history up to this day. It is so interesting to watch people in Slovenia how they can not go past the red carnation at least by stopping if not buying one. I found the pattern on line and this time I thought I’ll just resize it. It never goes that easy does it? At the end I had to re-draw the whole design by hand to fit. Honestly I liked the whole thing how it came out.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Did I mention that I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to stop. Here we have the proof. I saw this design somewhere online and I made a sketch of only one point of the star. Because I was cleaning the disc and history at the computer, couldn’t find the site any more. Trust me I tried hard. Anyhow, instead of mowing on, like any normal person, I persisted. Guess what kind of solution popped up? “Geometry will resolve all of my problems.” Yes my lovelies you’ve read it right. It was extremely relaxing hour of calculating and drawing the pattern and I was even more delighted when everything came out just perfect.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Finally we are coming to the end. Where my favorite piece is. I found the design on pinterest. Of course it had to be altered to fit in to my 7 cm circle. In my honest opinion this pattern was made by someone with a good eye for balance. I am not sure if this maybe was not made by a professional. As I fell in love with the drawn plan, I even more liked the finished product, pure perfection and another good example how modern lace should look like.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Finally we came to an end. I hope everyone enjoyed this long never ending post, at least some of the pictures look good. Please enjoy your upcoming holidays and make them as glam as you like.