It’s been a year since I created one of my own bobbin lace designs. The inspiration was filet lace, which can be realized mainly by crocheting, embroidering or weaving. Typical of this lace is the airy, geometric background and the filled, dense areas inside the lace. Mostly, people used day-to-day motifs as well as religious or decorative designs. The pixelated structure of the lace allows pictorial, and less abstract motifs to be incorporated into the lace.
While the geometric background pattern of the lace is usually horizontal, with bobbin lace this pattern can only be carried out in diagonal form.
Diagonally aligned grid paper was especially helpful in creating my design, making it easy to trace the pattern. The dense areas of the design were filled with linen stitches. The open areas are made up of two consecutive half stitches. This creates the open background pattern of the filet lace.
A particular challenge here was to determine the course of each bobbin and ensure that each had its place along the whole pattern. The transitions between the background pattern and the filled areas were also not easy to achieve.
This lace would be ideal for historical underwear, like 1900s lingerie. With a little more time, this would be a great project for a lace trimmed undergarment or a breezy summer dress.
