Reticella practice/harjoituksia

I’ve started my reticella practice with the help of the new books I ordered from Italy. The author Giuliana Buonpadre is a distinguished teacher and reviver of old needlework techniques. She has a beautiful website called Filofilò.

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Tilasin Italiasta käsityökirjoja niiden kirjoittajan Giuliana Buonpadren nettisivujen kautta. Hän on arvostettu vanhojen käsityötekniikoiden opettaja ja uudistaja. Il Reticello-kirjan opatuksella pääsin hyvin jyvälle tämän vanhan revinnäistekniikan saloista.

My first attempt below looks quite clumsy (at least blown up like this!) You need good lighting and a good pair of glasses/eyes. The linen I’m using here is a little too fine, about 20 threads to the cm instead of the 15 Giuliana Buonpadre suggests. You can see I’ve struggled with the thread count etc.

The light blue sewing tread is an Anchor Mercer Crochet 80 / Fil à Dentelles cotton, of which I bought 15 balls from a sale! Maybe to be used for some Hardanger later on since I bought that book too 🙂

The next try was with a linen thread since I’m planning to make a 17th century style collar with this technique and the historical pieces probably would have been made with linen. This finnish bobbin lace thread worked pretty well (Pella nypläyslanka 60×3), quite even for a linen and not getting muddled too easily.

Here are the preparatory stages: counting and removing the guide threads, whip stitching the edge, four sided stitch to reinforce, and weave stitch to cover the bars that remain.

On with the needle lace to fill the squares. For my collar I’ll need bigger holes! I’ve also ordered some mercerized linen thread – we’ll see how that works…