Needle Lace & Needleweaving: A New Look At Traditional Stitches * S I G N E D * [signed]

This excellent compendium and guide brings together information that has been buried in bits and pieces in books generally devoted to other forms of stitchery. Each stitch - over 60 traditional stitches, with many variations - is detailed in explicit step-by-step diagrams. Working samples in easy-to-see yarns are guides to accuracy, especially in complex stitches, such as Maltese cross in interlacing, which are worked on a lattice or grid of other stitches. Inviting photographs of contemporary work - from wall hangings to a garden sculpture - show the creative possibilities of modern materials and combinations with needlepoint, applique, surface embroidery, and macrame. Needle lace is a form of detached embroidery which does not go down into the background fabric at every stitch, but is instead attached only at the edges, or to an outline or border. The stitches are built upon each other in a network, which can be very open and lacy or densely close set. Both needle lace and needleweaving are similar to surface embroidery when the background fabric remains as a part of the work or to needle-made lace when the network of stitches if freed from its background. Needleweaving is essentially different from needle lace because the work is woven in and out of a warp of threads either already part of the background fabric, as in the many forms of drawn-thread work, or on a stretched warp made in advance of the needleweaving. Both needle lace and needleweaving belong in one book, because they can be so easily combined. the dividing line between them is very difficult to draw when the warp for the needleweaving is created by long straight stitches of needle lace or when the needle lace or when the needle lace stitches are built up from woven forms. There are chapters on basic materials, preparing the background for stitching, collecting, and attaching found objects, making a sampler, pressing and blocking, soft finishing and hard finishing. Illustrated index of stitches.