To catch a golden fish?

And coming back to laces. This time it will be filet lace. It is one of the oldest kind of lace. Filet lace becomes from nets used to fish. 

Tools for preparing a net

It is known that in 1295 there was some 'cushion of net work' in St. Paul's Cathedral. This kind of lace was used to do curtain, tableclothing, clothes... In Middle Ages it was also used as an elegant hair cloth.

I'd like to introduce a napkin I made for my sister some time ago.

First of all I had to prepare a knotted net as a background for this present.

 

A net in progress

To create the ground I use a netting shuttle  and a gauge. Because I wanted to make in very delicate, I took a quite narrow gauge.

 

A small netting shuttle

A rectangle net is made starting one corner and adding one mesh on each row, then making suitable number of rows with this number of meshes and decreasing in the end. After preparing 80 cm long and 40 cm wide net I could start embroider it in hardanger style.

 In the middle there are 56 squares made like canvas.

 

Canvas squares

It is surrounded by circles looking like chain links.

 

Chain links

And the borders are hardanger embroidered and cut in triangle shape.

 

Hardanger embroidery

It took me almost two months to create this napkin.

The whole napkin

The napkin is very delicate and looks really gorgeous.