Lace And Lavender

Day 294: Silly as it seems, I had to remind myself that I wasn't growing lavender as a feature in my flower bed, I was growing it as a crop to be harvested. After making half a dozen lavender bottles (lavender wands), I wanted to make sachets, so picked several bouquets, cleaning the buds from the stems as they dried. I chose a wide glitter-dotted voile ribbon for the sachet fabric and hand-stitched it into two-inch pillows which were stuffed to the max with fragrant, lovely lavender; functional to be sure, but not particularly esthetically pleasing. They needed fancying up with some hand-made lace.

Initially, I'd planned to tat the edgings, but tatting cotton is getting terribly hard to find these days, at least in the #80 size I prefer. I dismissed crocheting as too coarse and common. Bobbin lace? "Little Hearts" from Geraldine Stott's "100 Traditional Bobbin Lace Patterns" is one of my favourites, but it meant that I would have to reduce the number of repeats for a handkerchief edging to one suitable for my sachets. That was easy enough to do, although it did mean making a new pricking.

"Little Hearts" takes 12 pair of bobbins and one gimp thread. I used sewing thread for the lace although it's a bit heavy for bobbin work, because the colour selection can't be beat. The gimp (the heavier thread outlining the hearts) is #8 perle cotton. The lace for each sachet takes approximately six hours to complete, time I spread out over several days, working on other projects in between bobbin binges.

I'm almost done with my fourth edging, and when it's done, I plan to make a few with finer white thread and variously coloured gimps just to have on hand for gifts. Who knows? You might even find a bit of bobbin lace in your Christmas stocking this year if you're good!