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And of course, of the patterns I showed her, she picked the widest (26 pair total) but also the prettiest, a Bucks-style edging with hearts designed by Sally Barry and published in the IOLI Bulletin of Winter 1996-1997 (Volume 17, Number 2). Michele was the one who suggested adding a blue outline to the hearts. Not only does a bride need something new and blue for her wedding, but her favorite color happens to be blue. All her attendants wore blue.
I finally got to work on it in April, and laced on and off through August. Most of it was done while commuting back and forth to work in the vanpool. I have a long commute, and spend the summertime commutes making as much lace and handwork as I can (it's dark during commute time in the fall and winter).
Click here to see the garter!
Each repeat, once I got familiar with the pattern, took about 40 minutes if I worked uninterrupted. There were a total of 26 pairs used - 24 pair working thread (size 80 Madera Cotona) and 2 pairs gimp (1 pair size 12 DMC perle cotton in white, and the other pair 2 strands of DMC embroidery floss... and was it ever difficult to keep them reasonably twisted together!)
Click here to see the travel pillow with the lace still on (and the carrying case for the pillow... I like the ensemble very much!)
Click here to see me at work, with an interested friend watching
Click here to see a picture I call "Oh pleeeeeeeeeeese, can't I play with it yet?"
Click here to see me and my sister all dressed up and waiting our turn to walk out
The very end portion of the lace was done in New Orleans. I had to make a sudden trip there in August when my grandfather passed away. The lace pillow came along, and turned out to be quite a comfort. When we returned to her house after the funeral to host a small luncheon, she asked me to bring it out so some of her friends could see. So I demonstrated lacemaking instead of being sad. When a cousin stopped by later, out came the pillow again (Debbie had heard about it but hadn't been able to come to the luncheon). Only this time, it was a quiet chatting time, no guests to hostess. Grandma sat herself down beside me and watched me lace for hours. I was afraid to stop! She didn't want to learn how to make bobbin lace, she was just fascinated by the hand movements and the aesthetics of all the spangled bobbins. A nice memory. [And I got a promise on that trip that I was first on the list for her antique silver chatelaine should she ever decide to part with it
The work on the lace was mostly fun, but not without its frustrations... more than once after setting the work down for awhile, I'd start out doing the cloth stitch buds in honeycomb stitch. This is an ingrained habit from doing other Bucks patterns. But each time, I would preservere, and retro for a few minutes.
Well, one Saturday I was working on the garter at an LPS meeting while Margaret Merner spoke about the collection of lacy clothing from the Canadiana Costume Museum (oh do they have some lace!), complete with lots of beautiful samples. I was dividing my time between lacing, listening and watching. I hadn't made any lace in a couple of weeks... I guess you can imagine what happened! I started lacing away, and doing the buds in honeycomb stitch! The look on my face when I discovered my mistake - 1 full repeat of it! - must have been priceless, because everyone at my table heard my friend Melanie gasp and ask... "what did you do? are you okay???" Oh well, maybe you had to be there? It was funny, even if I did have to retro for nearly an hour. I had already made over 6 inches of good lace by that time (you'd think I'd remember by then!!) and I wasn't about to start over so that I had 26 inches of repeats worked properly (nor was I going to try to remember to intersperse a hollow-bed repeat every 6 inches!).
Thanks for sharing my lacemaking memories...
This page created 11 November 1998
