Lace update

It has been a while since I last posted my progress on the bobbin lace for the 16th C smock. I have just finished the longest piece, the one which will go around the collar. At this point I have 11 pieces done out of the 20 that the project needs.

When I finished the 2 pieces which will run down the top of the arms, I determined I did not like that pattern all that much and wanted to do something else for the other pieces on the arms. The second and third pieces from the top are the ones that will go on the top of the arms. I decided to try making a piece of lace directly from one of the patterns in Le Pompe, the pattern book drawn in the 16th century. This is my first attempt at doing something that did not have a modern interpretation of the pattern. you can just see the pattern from the book under the threads. The piece on the left that is loose was my first attempt. I decided quite quickly that the threads were too thin. They were 90/2. The second piece uses 60/2 thread, which I think looks much better. The first one just looked too spidery and light. I am a little worried about how a piece of lace using such coarse thread will look next to the other pieces I have made for this project. They all use considerably finer thread.

Now I have also found a new book; Seventeenth Century Women's Dress Patterns by Susan North and Jenny Tiramani. This book shows the bobbinlace from the original smock that I am trying to replicate in much higher magnification. They also have patterns for the bobbinlace. Though they are fairly simplistic. The one I looked at in detail did not seem to have quite enough lines to show the paths of all the bobbins, but I have not tried it yet so I may be wrong. Anyway, I should be able to replicate the pattern for the pieces of lace they have on the arms. I am very excited about this. I have been trying to find a pattern which had a similar overall appearance. Now I will be able to replicate the original much more accurately. The book also shows a pattern for the smock itself. I had not even started to think about how I was going to put this all together yet. The smock they show is the one which is also in Janet ARnold's book that has a chevron pattern on bobbinlace. When I started this project, I decided I wanted to make a smock with teh bobbinlace applied in a straight instead of slanted pattern. It is more a combination of the two laced smocks in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 4 on page 60. Now with the combination of the two books, it has become much easier.