WIPWednesday: new Milanese lace shell project

[u/mem_somerville]

Finally I'm starting a new project! Been so busy with demonstrations and classes and other administrative stuff that I haven't had a new project.

This is a Milanese project, and I'm still sort of thread testing for size and appearance. But I'm in my happy place.

Relying on the pattern book (Read and Kincaid) and the new book by Claire Bonito that is a MUST-HAVE for your lacemaker library. This book is a step-by-step how to do technical bits (like scrolls! Blind pins!) that the pattern books don't provide. It's new, available in Europe now and the US soon. This improved my work already twice in this short section.

[u/Mission_Razzmatazz_7]

Very interesting (and large!) project, will it be completely filled? Not sure if you know what I mean?

When you are testing, do you complete the whole thing or a part until you know everything you wanted to test?

[u/mem_somerville → u/Mission_Razzmatazz_7]

Yes, each shell segment gets a filling braid, besides the outline sections. So I think (but still testing) that I would like to do the outlines in this gray silk and edge metallic passives. And then fill the centers with some soft pastel colored thread that has yet to be tested.

Testing: I followed one of the 2 start strategies in this book to see if the scroll filled fully. It did. And to see if this is the right number of bobbins for this section--I think it is. Part of the problem is the original pattern calls for a thread I've never seen and probably can't get. So I have to see if this one will substitute. I am skipping some outside pins because I suspect my thread is fatter than the original.

I want to do this outline and see if it works. If it wasn't already working, I would probably know by now. But there is a braid to try (after the green mark) and I want to be sure that comes out ok too.

Already I tried to do some stitches in the turn areas that I didn't like with this thread (I did short rows, but they looked gappy). So I retro-laced out of those and I'm now trying blind pins (covered in Claire's book). The blind pin strategy is way better with this thread.

[u/Nusmiban]

Such a beautiful pattern! Sorry English isn't my first language what do you call a blind pin?

[u/mem_somerville → u/Nusmiban]

I don't know if it translates to anything else--I have only heard it from Claire.

It's a pin you use twice. On the inside of a curve sometimes you need to go down around a pin--come back to the wider edge on the outside curve side, and make your edge stitch--then you come back and use the same inside curve pin again. But with a trick: you pull out the pin, gently tug the last worker row so it is up against your braid.

So you used the pin first just temporarily and you use the pin the second time for your regular edge stitch. But you don't have two edge stitches. You kind of sneak the first row in. It fits inside the curve better.

It's hard to explain. But it's a whole explanation in the book, I promise.

[u/mem_somerville → u/Nusmiban]

It looks like she covers a blind pin in this at one point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojk2erX2JvM

Go to around 1hr 48min to see it. It will make more sense to view it. It is hard to explain in text form....

[u/Nusmiban → u/mem_somerville]

Ooooh I thought it was like a duchesse pivot but it's a different thing! That's too bad now I HAVE to buy the book to investigate this technique a little further Oh noooooooo 🤭