Needlepoint Lace Tutorial – Part 9 « textile dreams

Needlepoint Lace Tutorial – Part 9

August 11, 2007 at 12:31 pm | In Lace, Tutorial | 9 Comments

At the end of the last part I had a finished piece of lace still attached to the pattern. So, the next step is to remove the lace from the pattern. For this, take out the stitches that hold the doubled-up piece of fabric together first. After that, you can go on to remove all the stitching that holds the pattern and the lace to the fabric by cutting the threads between the two layers of fabric. This ensures that you don’t accidentally tear or distort the lace while removing the threads. When you’re finished with this, it should be easy to remove first the paper pattern and the lace from the fabric and afterwards the lace from the pattern. The result of this operation looks like this from the backside:
Maple Seeds Backside

You see lots of little thread-ends sticking out of the outline. These need to be removed next. A pair of pliers comes in handy here. Most of the threads should be easily removable. Sometimes, there’s a thread that’s attached to the lace so firmly that it’s impossible to remove. In these cases, I just cut them as short as possible. They’re all but invisible if the sewing thread has the same colour as the lace, therefore I always use the same colour.

When all of this is finished, all that’s left to do is to take a nice picture:

As for taking good photographs, I’ve found it important to use a non-reflecting background. For this, I use a piece of black cardboard that works pretty well. When the surface is reflecting I’ve found that my cameras auto-focus has problems focusing and I get blurry pictures. The other essential for me is good lighting. Using the flash isn’t too successful and I always get problems in artificial light, so I try to get natural light whenever possible.

With this installment, we’ve followed this small piece of lace from start to finish, and I really like the result. I’m still learning a lot with each piece of lace I make, and I already have some ideas of things I want to try. But more about that later.

9 Comments »

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This is fantastic and your work is so neat and precise. This is one of the many crafts that I still wish to learn. By the way, thanks for the photography tip. I have had quite a few problems in photographing my work for my blog. I will have to give your ideas a go. Cheers.

Comment by Suzanne — August 13, 2007 #

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I am so pleased to have found this tutorial. I am just ready to begin my first piece of needle lace and while I thought I knew what to do, but this spells it out so clearly that I now have a step by step idea of how to proceed. I haven’t decided on my pattern yet, but your tutorial gives me an idea of what to look for in order to keep it simple.

Thanks so much for writing it all out.

Peggy

Comment by Peggy — August 24, 2008 #

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How lovely, and what a beautifully written/illustrated tutorial!

Comment by Sarah E. — August 26, 2008 #

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Beautiful work, all the more because the design is an original one. You actually taught yourself this from an online resource – amazing. Congratulations.

Comment by shobha — November 25, 2008 #

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No, actually I couldn’t find an online tutorial for needlepoint lace. I learnt from Valerie Grimwood’s Starting Needlepoint Lace.

Comment by textiledreamer — November 25, 2008 #

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One question – how do you use these finished pieces ? Do you frame all of them as wall-pictures?

Comment by shobha — November 26, 2008 #

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ahm, no, I’d find that a bit boring. At the moment they are living happily in a box waiting for an idea. What I’m trying to do currently is to figure out ways to use those old needlework techniques for things that we would actually like to wear or use nowadays. I outlined some of my ideas about this topic in Needlework for Today.

Comment by textiledreamer — November 26, 2008 #

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What a great tutorial – I especially appreciate the tips on putting down the cordonette.

best regards

Comment by Megan — February 1, 2009 #

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Muchas gracias por este tutorial. He aprendido mucho con él y sé lo laborioso que debe haber sido subirlo. Mil gracias.

Comment by Carmen Andrade — September 14, 2009 #

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