Reticella Lace Making

The line from weaving to other crafts seems to be strong. I love weaving, but it’s also led me to enjoy punch needle, macrame, jute sculptures, crochet… and now lace! Maybe its fiber arts in general. It seems that if you like one medium, chances are you like others. Manbe its because there are so many interesting ways to manipulate fibers. They’re like Pokeman - I want to catch them all!

Anyway, last year I started becoming entranced with lace making. Did you know that there are 14 well known different types of lace? Each one has it’s own history! I started by trying tatting, and really connected with it, but also felt limited. There’s only one stitch and the designs are all concentric. However, my exploration of tatting led me to another lace called Reticella. Honestly, the categorizations for lace are not quite clear to me yet. Reticella / Punta in Aria / Amelia Airs / Needle Lace in general are slightly different I think, but all seem extremely similar, so I might be labelling things incorrectly. For now, I’m just going to call it needle lace.

I immediately felt drawn to the patterns from 16th century needle lace and thought I would give it a go. Fail. It was way more confusing than I thought it would be. I tried a few patterns, but they all fell apart or made me frustrated. So, I put it in my pile of ‘someday’ projects and moved on.

Well, one of my goals for 2023 is to follow new interests, and not get frustrated if they take time. (Social media is all about content… and content has to be made quickly… so slow projects usually get nixed!) I picked up one of the needle lace patterns, cut the first attempt off and started over.

It clicked!

And it was SO fun.

Now, I’m a bit obsessed. It feels like the first time I tried weaving. I want to learn it all and try it all. I’m think about it all the time and can tell I’m getting better and better. Lace is amazing, and I hope you think so too because I’m excited to explore more of it this year!