Lace Maille Again

I'm taking a big breath as I look forward to the busy week ahead. My guests arrived overnight and are still slumbering of course. We planned a barbecue for this afternoon, not to celebrate the holiday, but to have the family get together and visit. This is slightly amusing to me because with the exception of my brother and his fiancée, they were all over here on Saturday for my daughter's birthday party. So to recap the weekend, there was cleaning, birthday party, more cleaning, Kung Fu Panda 2 and a little more cleaning.

I had an idea back when I made the first lace maille piece to use the design for a pair of similarly embellished ankle corsets. I draped them over my foot and this was what it looked like, so I assumed it would be a simple conversion. It kind of has a gladiator sandal look...though honestly I hate gladiator sandals except when they're on gladiators. But I digress, I had a little time of Friday to start working on the motifs and yesterday during nap time I was able to finish them all and get them assembled.

While, the conversion was not as simple as I thought and I did try a couple of different approaches before I settled on a split ring edge, it should be easy enough to replicate. With all the cutting and tying of individual motifs, it is a time consuming project already. It lays out nicely and fits the foot well and just like it's necklace cousin, the attachment of jump rings for connections makes it a bit more adjustable. Next up is the also time consuming task of sewing on all the crystals. I bet you're wondering why they need to be sewed on and not just tatted into the design. The crystals are in montée settings which have two crossed channels on the underside for sewing. The channels are two narrow to accommodate my size 10 thread once let alone doubled. I love the look of them which is far more sparkly than the crystal bead versions so I sew. I've been using clean quilting thread for this sort of task ever since I discovered it and I've worked out a way to neatly sew all four crystals to a motif in one go while keeping the visible thread on the back to a minimum.

I'll likely attempt to work on the crystals during any downtime I get this week, but will all the activity, that may be all I do get done. I do still have a couple of necklaces that need remaking and I still do want to make a thicker version of the midnight choker too. Those all all lined up to work on and after those I hope to get some time to really look through my newest tatting book acquisitions for new ideas and bits. Another deep breath and it's onto the week ahead.