Tambour Lace Lesson 3

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For today’s lesson, I am going to focus on one technique that will allow you to do a couple of very useful things. It’s a very helpful little trick to keep your work looking neat and tidy.

It’s not complicated, and once you’ve learned it, you’ll find that a whole new world of possibilities opens up.

As far as I can tell, this technique doesn’t have a name, so I’m going to refer to it as a “false stop” because that’s exactly what it is: behaving as if you’ve finished the work, but actually moving on instead.

My old lap hoop, sadly, has broken off of its stand, and I need to fix it, so this tutorial was photographed in a small hoop, clamped to the edge of a table. This is a great solution if you can’t invest in a hoop with a stand right now, but you have other embroidery hoops around.

Imagine you have embroidered a motif, like this cute little flower:

It’s finished, but there’s no clear way to get from the flower to the next part of your pattern. You could cut the thread, but goodness, who wants more ends to weave in when you’re finished?! Not I.

So instead, you follow these simple steps:

Pull out the final stitch on your needle so that you have a large loop. It doesn’t need to be as big as shown.

Put your needle through the back of the work, right next to your last stitch, but if you are working on net, NOT in the same cell as your last stitch.

Pull on your working thread to tighten the loop around the hook.

Pull the loop through to the back of the work. You will need a large loop on this side.

Take your working thread.

And pass the entire spool, threadwinder, skein, what-have-you through the loop.

Pull the working thread so that the loop tightens up around it.

Continue pulling until the loop has tightened up completely. Try not to pull any more than necessary, or you may distort the stitches at the front of the work. The knot doesn’t need to be extremely tight, it’s only there to stop the work from pulling out while you take the working thread somewhere else.

At this point, the stitches on your first motif are secure, and you can now pull up the working thread at another point in your pattern and continue working as normal.

I love this particular fragment from the Manchester Art Gallery because you can clearly see the working thread moving from place to place behind the fine muslin.

Now that you’ve seen how useful a false stop can be for moving your thread from one place to another without breaking it, I’ll show you another way to use the same technique: turning sharp corners.

You may have noticed that tambourwork doesn’t like to go around corners. The turning stitch tends to distort and stick up in an effort to make the turn. Fear not! This can be avoided.

When you come to a place in your work where you need to turn a sharp corner, perform a false stop using the same steps as above.

 

But, instead of moving to a different place, insert your hook back into your last completed stitch–NOT into the loop you pulled down as part of the false stop, but into the fully visible stitch before that.

Pull up your working thread.

And continue to stitch as normal, reveling in the beauty of your perfectly sharp corner.

This technique comes in incredibly handy while working a complicated tambour motif.

I hope you have found this tutorial helpful. As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

For more tambour lessons, click here.