October Meeting - Lace Workshop

 

At our October meeting Hazel, one of our members held a small workshop for needlelace and battenburg lace.  Hazel is an experienced lace-maker and you may have seen her demonstrating bobbin lace at the recent open studio exhibition.

Needlelace was originally made by couching foundation threads onto a parchment backing.  It was then possible to make designs that did not rely on the grid of a woven fabric so did not need to be geometric designs.  It was know as Punto in Aria - stitching in the air.

Some of us were shown how to make a simple leaf.  The designs are now drawn on paper, covered with sticky back plastic to protect it from the needle and tacked onto a pad of calico.  We couched round the outline of the leaf with tacking stitches and then filled in the space between using needle lace stitches.

This is a more complex example that Hazel brought to show us. 

Needle Lace

Battenburg lace is a tape lace.  Hazel brought some supplies of this and some of us were shown how to manipulate it to make a design and infil the shape with needlelace.

This is an example of one that Hazel prepared earlier.

Battenburg Lace

We very much enjoyed the workshop and look forward to finishing our leaves and shapes and will think how we can incorporate lacework into our future work.

More information about lacework can be found here Museum | The Lace Guild | England

At the meeting we were also given the criteria for our 2025 challenge - looking forward to see what everyone produces. Watch this space!