In the Garden

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer to God's heart in the garden

Than anywhere else on earth

Dorothy Gurney

1858 - 1952

Hydrangea is out of design and ready to go into test knit.

This one posed some interesting problems and taught me a lot about where to place yarnovers and decreases when designing lace.

I worked from a lace pattern called wide leaf border. The shape of the leaf was right for the hydrangea, but it repeated horizontally,

And I wanted diagonals (I like diagonals; they seem to worm their way into eveeything I design, lol!)

So I fiddled with the pattern, offsetting the repeats until I got what I wanted.

But the leaf faced up. I wanted it to hang down.

Simple. Right? Just flip it upside down...

But it still looked like it was growing up and not down.

The key turned out to be decreases in the center and holes along the edge instead of the center. That pulls the top half of the leaf into a diagonal slant, leaving the bottom half straight up and down.

The straightaways began as another established pattern, but I modified them to fit the width of the leaf so that each line of beading blossoms at its top into the bottom of a leaf.

And by moving the decreases to the center I got a nice clean vertical line up the center of the motif as well.



And then there was the orientation of the trellis and the hydrangea blossoms at the center of each opening.

Again I began with a known pattern, but wound up modifying (as you heard about in yesterdays "black hole" post.

The original pattern called for another lace motif at each intersection of the trellis. But I wanted something more solid.

Why?

So I would have someplace to put these:

That my friends, is a little 3-d hydrangea action!

Which will be anchored to the finished piece with a larger bead.

I think...

unless it's too much...

Wouldn't want to be accused of gilding the lily hydrangea...

AND DON'T FORGET; IRIS GOES ON SALE MONDAY!

Are we having fun yet?