I’ve been wanting to make a lace journal for a while now having seen a few on pinterest, in particular the ones that were bursting with lace, overflowing! I’ve quite a lot of lace, both new and vintage, pieces I’d bought on holiday and ones I’d bought in charity shops. Last month I finally got round to starting it.

Having pulled out the various pieces of lace onto my work bench it quickly became apparent that I would have to stitch it ‘in one go’. it couldn’t drag on for months, or even weeks, as it made so much mess!! Here’s my work space after I had sorted them a bit…

A lot of the pinterest pages I had seen were very complex with little motifs of lace cut out, lots of embroidery too. I didn’t want to spend days on each page, I also realised I really didn’t have the ideas to create the more complex pages, when I tried to put them together they were mainly lines of lace. I decided to look for a poem or piece of prose I could use. I found one by Brunonia Barry which I felt would work…

“There is lace in every living thing; the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze…even a wild dogs matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look hard enough”

I loved the first three images, just wasn’t keen on the last one, and it went on too long! I decided to add a few extra lines of my own…

“the skeleton of an oakleaf, the wings of a dragonfly. Memories are entwined in lace, in weddings and christenings, holidays and happy days and times gone by.”

I used old napkins, doillies and traycloths for the backing. I wrote the words using a frixion pen, using a sepia coloured DMC thread as I didn’t want the embroidery to compete with the beautiful lace. I pinned the lace in place, then stitched it using standard sewing thread. I was using both sides of a piece of linen so I either hid the back of the stitching with more lace or just accepted it was there. The words were often stitched over the lace or following the lines of a piece of lace. Here’s one page in the preparation stage…

It took several days to make all the pages, embroidering the words and stitching down all the lace. I also included large pieces of lace, either because it was so beautiful, or sentimental, for example, there is a piece of my wedding dress lace. Pages include lace I used for my daughter’s christening gown, a cross of bobbin lace my mum made for my prayerbook cover when I was confirmed at the age of fourteen, there is also a blank page left as somewhere I have a square of bobbin lace I made when I was about twelve…I’ve put it somewhere so safe I can’t find it!

Many of the lace samples extend beyond the linen edge, I wanted that overflowing feel. I think the poem works well, I do like it when you get an idea off Pinterest and run with it!

Here’s my pages all prepared, waiting to be made into a book…and yes, there’s a page upside down in the photo!!

…and the other sides…

All I had to do now was make it into a book, but that will be another post!