Tambour Lace Lesson 3

To find more tambour lessons: click here.

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.

 

Two Weekends of Tambour

I’ve gotten to spend the past two weekends doing one of my favorite things: dressing up and demonstrating needlework at Locust Grove! For these demos I was doing tambour embroidery, which was a very popular form of embellishment from the mid-18th century up into the early Victorian era, when it was eventually supplanted by machine work and fresh, new hobbies. It has never gone away completely, however, and is still used in embellishing couture clothing, and especially for bead and sequin work.

The late 18th century and Regency eras were the heyday of tambour whitework, which produces a beautiful lacy effect on either fine fabrics, or net. It is very fun to do and satisfying, and makes a great demo because it progresses faster than needle and thread embroidery, so guests can see a piece growing even if they only watch me work for a few minutes.

The first piece, which I finished at Gardener’s fair two weekends ago, I’ve been working on for quite some time. It is a fichu embroidered with a design from the August 1814 issue of Ackermann’s Repository.

I was very excited to finally finish up this piece on Sunday!

The second design is from March 1814. I am doing two strips of it, about 18″ long, which will make some lovely sleeve cuff ornamentation. I started working on these during our Farm Distillery opening this past weekend.

It’s been a great two weekends, but it will be very nice to have a quiet weekend at home. I’ll be moving forward once more with the bustle and petticoats for my Ravenclaw-inspired 1870s look!

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