Heirloom Cutwork and "Faux" Crocheted Lace Hankie Tutorial Part III

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had fun embroidering the lace in Part II of the tutorial.  Here is Part III.  Keep on sewing!

PART III:  Let’s put the lace together and prepare to make our hankie  

Next, you need to cut out the lace.  Don’t pull it away from the stabilizer like you typically do with your embroidery designs.  Instead, use your rotary cutter and ruler and cut each piece out.  Leave a little extra stabilizer around the edges.  Here is how my pieces looked after I cut them out:

 

TIP:  Put your excess stabilizer in a spray bottle and add water to it.  You can use this spray when you need to stiffen fabric.  This is a good way to recycle those scraps.

 

Now pick up two pieces of lace that you want to put together to make a longer piece.  Trim away the stabilizer on one edge fairly close to the lace edge.

Line up the “bar” on the lace piece you cut the stabilizer on with the last bar on the previous section.  Remember, there should be three “bars” here.  You are meeting up the middle “bar” for the section.

 

Now, head to your sewing machine.  Again, put the same thread you used for your embroidery in the top and in the bobbin.  Set up your machine to a 1.7mm stitch width and .5mm stitch length.  I stitched this on a scrap of stabilizer just to check the stitching to see if it looked like it would work.

Looks good.  Now, take the two pieces of lace you have lined up and put them under the presser foot.  I have a knee lifter on my machine and found it useful to use it to lower my presser foot so I could keep both hands on the lace while I put it under the needle.  My zigzag stitch starts on the left side of the stitch, so I lowered my needle into the left side of the “bar.”  Begin stitching…your zigzag should just hit on either side of the lace “bar.”

 

Backstitch at the beginning and end.  Go from the top of the bar to the end of the bar.  Cut your threads.  You have now adhered two pieces of lace together.

 

 

Now, attach a corner to one end of the lace.  Trim the stabilizer on one side of the corner piece, line it up, and stitch it just like you did with the two straight pieces.

 

 

Repeat for all the pieces of lace until your lace forms a square.

 

 

You now have the lace to go around your hankie!

Next, in Part IV we’ll make the hankie to go inside the lace.

I hope you are enjoying this tutorial and making lace!

Until next time,

Mama Pea