Finished stitching in thin air

The above photo shows the finished needle lace. It looks rather messy, with all the loose ends, knots of the cords and fraying edges, and it needs cutting down to the pattern shape. But before I dared to cut it, I re-machined with a small machine stitch over the existing pale blue machine stitch outline, that I’d used to hold the cords in place, with a thread that matched the background fabric. The fabric frays fairly badly.

I checked the original piece with perlé threads. This really was the stitching in thin (mid) air, between the sides of my improvised plastic-coated wire frame work the size of the finished piece.

I offered them up to check the two matched size-wise. The photo just shows them together.

I used my rotary cutter, quilting ruler and a cutting board to cut as close to the machine stitching as possible. I then went all round the edge with watered-down PVA, left it to dry, and just to make sure I’d not missed anywhere put on a second coat. I also did two coats on the back piece, making sure it was all covered but not too gluey, which might have left dried bits of glue visible. It all seems fairly secure and shouldn’t fray either.

I used blue pony beads to raise the stitched-in thin air piece on the back of the shard.

I made a twisted cord (much too long, so lots of spare) to stitch around the two long sides. The stitching was a bit tricky with the glued edge. I resorted to a thimble in the end, as I was making holes in the end of my middle finger trying to push it through. This meant I didn’t get it finished last week in time to hand in. The assembly team want the bottom to be left as it is, so they can make any adjustments as they put the whole lot together on the framework.

A close-up of the finished point, it worked better than I expected.

On the back I’ve left the extra threads at the bottom. I think it must have stretched a little with the glue, but it can be cut off or not as they see fit. It’s already to hand in next month.

Stitching in thin air

Sometimes things just come together at the right time. Back in October the members of Lincolnshire Textiles were asked to work together on a collaborative piece for an exhibition in the Chapter House at Lincoln Cathedral in August. We each have a “shard” to do, which will be assembled nearer the time when we have all finished our piece.

It is to be blue and any technique we like. The back will be partially seen, so we need to consider that too. We all had to trace off our shard pattern piece, either basically a triangle or one with two points. I chose a single pointed shard. Pieces of blue fabric were there to use too, if we wanted. I took a rather nice piece of blue linen, as it’s not a colour I use very much, and couldn’t think of a suitable piece in my stash that was big enough.

Round about the same time I’d watched a worshop by Jean Draper on the http://TextileArtist.org and decided it would be fun to try. Jean had suggested working on a small square frame, but I wanted my piece to be shard-shaped. I improvised a frame within a frame using a piece of plastic coated wire, a bit Heath Robinson-ish, but ok for a trial piece. I then started criss-crossing the perle threads with the suggested coral knot stitches.

I suspended the frame over the fabric to see how it would look. It more or less worked.

The idea is then to start wrapping the threads to give more texture. (Jean does several pieces and layers them up.) At this stage it got abandoned.

After Christmas, I had been making a cord for something else, when I wondered if I could get a similiar effect with cords. So made a pile of cords and realised they would be difficult to tie at the edge. Could I machine stitch each cord on the edge of the fabric? Yes, but the shard has to be self-supporting somehow, so I have put two layers of pelmet vilene between the front and back of the fabric. Then I machine-stitched the shard shape before attaching a couple of cords, then doing coral knots as they cross and machine- stitching them down at a different edge near the end of the cord. Rather fiddly, but they are firmly anchored. There are no photos of the process, as I got so engrossed in the doing and making it work.

I have started filling in some of shapes with some needle lace; Corded Brussels stitch and Brussels stitch, basically buttonhole stitches that sit on top of the fabric, in various shades of blue in a different thickness of perlé and crochet threads. (Sorry, back to awful light for photos!)

I left the ends initially, but have now sewn most of them in. I’d got to the stage where I couldn’t see where to go next, and sewing the ends in has made it easier to assess.

There’s a way to go yet, and I’m going to introduce a little bit of sparkle and some more shades of blue.