my own bobbinlace pattern

I read somewhere that the real mark of a bobbinlace maker is the ability to make tallies. I ahve now been making lace for years and I decided it was time to take the next step. In the book "Gekloppelte Reticella" there are lots of pieces of milanese lace pictures that all contain multiple tallies. Since I do not have a teacher, I have had to learn from books. In this case I turned to youtube.com. A search of bobbinlace tallies came up with a few different methods for making them. I started the piece of lace adn tried multiple different ways each time I came to another tally. It is pretty easy to tell which end of the lace was the beginning. The tallies are hopeless. By the end of the piece they are getting a little better. The tallies are the filled in triangles coming out of the middle of the first third and fifth medallions.

 

You can see in the first medallion that the triangles are not well formed at all. Either they are vanishingly small or have rouge threads sticking out. By the fifth medallion I have begun to get some consistancy. After this small piece, I started another immeidately to continue practicing. I also want to use this pattern around the collar of the elizabethan smock.

 

In other thing I had been wanting to try was making my own pattern from an existent piece of lace. I decided to start out fairly simple and make a piece of lace from "Old Italian Lace" by Elena ricci. the piece I chose is made entirely from braids intertwined. I copied a picture of the lace and made a variety of samples of different sizes. I did not see anywhere in the book, the original size of the samples. I made 3 small samples of the lace with different sized of linen thread.

 

 

The first piece is made with 35/2 thread while the middle one is 60/2 and the far right is 80/2. I did them in order from left to right. I personally like the one farthest to the right, the thinnest thread. comparing it to the orginal picture, I think the thinnest one looks closest.

 

 

 

These pieces of lace are numbers #36 for the tally trial, and #37, 38 and #39 for the A&S 50 challenge. Next, I am going to try a piece that has mixed braids and grounds from the same source. I am working out of Volume II in the section on Venisian lace.