Charles Fréger has photographed a series of portraits of Breton women wearing costumes and headdresses of endless variety: from high starched towers to elaborately pinned, tucked and embroidered confections of handmade lace, as delicate as they are distinctive.
Costumes and headdresses may indicate a wearer’s village, as well as age or status. They are worn for celebrations of a marriage, birth, or a local saint’s day, or to mark a period of mourning. Young girls, women both married and unmarried, mothers, sisters and grandmothers pose in costume for these wonderful photographic portraits.
Over 50 headdresses are introduced and described in a separate reference section, accompanied by specially commissioned illustrations. Fréger’s exceptional photographs demonstrate a wealth of pride and personal expression that make this book a unique testament to a living tradition.
Throwback to these bookmarks I made a few years back - not only are they some of my favorite tatting I’ve done, these were also some of my favorite staged pictures I’ve ever taken for a crafting project! I can also do this lace pattern as a choker, which is what the last picture shows.
(I don’t have these listed on Etsy anymore, but if you want one, just message me - I’d be happy to make them again and set up the listing.)
The pattern for these is from Robin Perfetti’s bookmarks collection, but unfortunately her Etsy shop has not been up for a few years, so the collection is currently unavailable. You can still find her free patterns on her blog: http://tattingbythebay.blogspot.com/.
I am ready to show off my WIP!!! A lot of the cordonnet (outline) tension mistakes are due to using thread that’s too fine for tacking (basting) stitches. I have thicker thread in the mail, so hopefully that will sort a lot of… this… out.
While I working on the cordonnet I realized that having a “floating” (ie not locked) motif is kind of intermediate/advanced so I am thinking of explaining it as “if it intersects, it must connect” but maybe that only makes sense to me (let me know).
I was trying to create Burano’s square ground, but I don’t work in Burano and I still haven’t really mastered any ground stitches. You can see that it’s twisted buttonhole instead of knotted buttonhole (the only difference is knotted buttonhole is pulled tiiight).
Otherwise, I think this is going well, and it’s going much better than I imagined before I pitched “I don’t have a macro camera, so what if I started making macro lace instead?”
I know that generally a ground is worked in a smaller thread (so it doesn’t obstruct the motif… which is clearly not a memo I got) but it was already really hard sourcing thread that matched all my criteria this well… luckily my next few planned projects don’t require a ground and I will take into account the muddling effect in designs going forward.
I would love to receive feedback on this project (sorry it took me so long!) and I’ll be doing a more detailed writeup soon!!!
A few hours ago I saw a post by @bobbinlacebliss about a handkerchief edging they made and I loved the pattern. I’ve almost got it right now, I think, although I might play with picot size a bit more. You can see how I’ve made adjustments as I’ve gone along.
I’ll probably whack it on a short petticoat when I’ve got enough, I’ve wanted a very fluffy one to wear under mini skirts for ages, and the slightly pointed lace pattern is perfect - as is the fact it only takes one shuttle.
Update on this. Even though I’ve had some unique challenges with this, I’m liking how it came out a lot more than I thought (although I would, again, like it better had I chose the correct pattern size in the first place).
Hands specifically (since someone asked and it looked like either people were also curious): this doesn’t hurt. Most stitches don’t (the bad ones for me are twisted buttonhole stitch, pea stitch, and variations on those… and twisted buttonhole is usually okay if it isn’t all working rows, that I hate [looking at you, Argentan, point de gaze]) hurt my fingers. They put my wrists, elbow, and forearms through it though.
This does not include weaving in the ends. If you’re doing it right, it’s not terrible during lace. However the piece will still randomly fight you. If you made anything too tight or too loose you’ve already lost. Take your time. It’ll get better.
The cordonnet is completely different since most of the rest of it is filled. That will make all my fingers rebel. Which is why I tend to put it to the end instead of working through (which I’ve seen other lacemakers do). It’s double the thread (at least) so double the opportunity for mischief. The tacking stitches and existing threads have already rubbed against the backing quite a bit, so they’re ready to go (this is why you try to avoid punching through at the very beginning. I’ve worked the cordonnet through torn paper and off the backing. Not fun. Don’t recommend.)