metal and lace music

I have drawers full of lace. I never wear it, i rarely use it, but i love the stuff. My girliegirl side coveted it when i was a child, my sensible side said it was pointless and perhaps even wrong to wear something so fragile and beautiful.

I've always wanted to make lace, but i know i'd never have the patience, or the dexterity now and the focus. I can't tat, can barely crochet and knit never. But embroidery can simulate the appearance of lace, and even some of the characteristics, depending on the stitch. All the raised effect stitches i have been learning and practicing in the last little while, can combine with net darning, punto in aria and battenburg. And with the machine creating the base ground, speed does become a factor. I can spend hours spinning the tulle in the machine adding various grounds with my favourite machine stitches, then slow down and add relief, in many senses of the word :}, with hand work.

But i don't want just gossamer; i want depth, hand, weight and treasure, sound even. In stitching the metals, they become optical illusions, puddled with light, disappearing into the background. Sparks show in unstitched areas of the copper, the air is illuminated in the sinuous clearings of tulle, the surface of hand and machine stitch is tactile and deep.

The stitches condense, fall off the edge, shadow themselves if the bobbin is a different colour. When i hoop for the handwork, i have a sheer tambourine ringing with the basso profundo of black, the tenor of twilight purple and the soprano of sweet 16 pink. All of it rings again the needle, the metal and the beads. The sussuration of cloth against the rasp of metal against the soft notes of thread: if i could see music as i dream music, it would look like this.