Evenfall Lace

So you’ve just bought a bunch of beautiful Evenfall Lace embroidery designs, and you’re raring to give them a try! This tutorial will show you how to assemble the few pieces that need it, and then how to turn them into a truly awesome couture collection you make with your own hands. With this collection, you can make some real magic with your machine.

Stitching the Lace

This lace stitches out in a similar fashion to the Battenburg lace, in that it’s designed to be stitched in 50 weight cotton thread. There are a couple of reasons for this, the primary one being cotton holds the shapes of this kind of delicate lace better. Plus, cotton is dyeable! But we’ll get to that later.

To stitch your lace, you’ll need heavy duty water soluble stabilizer, 50 weight cotton thread, and a wound cotton bobbin. Follow these instructions if you’ve never stitched cotton lace before. When you’re done stitching each separate piece, soak away the stabilizer according to your packet instructions.

Assembling the Pieces

The Mask

Your mask design is going to come in two parts. This is so you combine them to create a bigger lace piece even if your machine has a small embroidery area, and it also means you get three masks in one! What do I mean? Well, you can stitch the mask as intended, with an asymmetrical look, or pick one side of the mask or the other and mirror those pieces for a symmetrical mask. Three in one!

Either way, what you’ll want at this point is two mask pieces, a right and a left.

Grab some matching cotton thread and a hand-sewing needle, and turn your mask over so the “wrong” side is up (it may be kind of hard to tell with lace, but it will be the side that was facing down while stitching.)

Start hand-stitching a nice tight seam between both halves of your mask. Try and keep your stitches from going too far through to the other size, so when viewed from the front, your mask’s seam is invisible.

You may also use patch glue or something similar to keep it bonded.

Once you’re done stitching, flip it over. Done! That was easy. OK, so it’s not fully finished yet, but this is the fully assembled lace piece.

The Choker

This choker design is unique in that unlike the other lace chokers Urban Threads has released thus far, it comes in three separate pieces. The choker was designed to be stitched together with the edge flower pedals and the raven heads touching.

To see the placement of the two halves, see the photo. The two petals on the flower touch along the raven, so that the leaf points down next to his beak.

I would also recommend stitching this one from the back, so your stitches are invisible from the front.

It’s especially important to be using cotton thread if you plan to dye your pieces like I did, as synthetic thread won’t take the dye and will make your stitches more visible.

The Cuff

This bracelet design will come in two or three pieces, depending on which design size you're using. This is the 5"x7" version, with a complete wrist piece.

The 4"x4" version has the wrist piece in two parts that will need to be attached in the middle, so they resemble the 5"x7" version. Use the same hidden stitches on the back like you have on the rest of your lace.

Now for the part of the cuff that goes on your hand. This is designed to fit in the gap on the wrist piece.

Like shown, the curls on the wrist piece should touch the feathers, and the bottom curl on the hand piece should touch near the middle of the wrist piece. I would recommend stitching at both these contact points (on both sides) to keep your pieces more secure on your hand and allow it to keep its shape.

The Butterfly

The split butterfly design comes in two halves. All you need to do to make your complete butterfly is to stitch the two halves together like so. (There's also a one-piece butterfly).

And that’s it! All your lace is either now assembled or was already good to go without assembly. Now, grey is fine and all, but I stitched these in grey cotton so I could do something very special with them...

Dyeing Your Lace

That’s right, cotton can be dyed! It creates truly stunning effects on lace, and it’s very very easy to do. All you need is regular fabric dye. I used RIT black. If you like your fingers as they are, I would also recommend gloves.

You’ll also need a couple of containers. At least one for dye, and one for water. For more specialized dying, you may want different cups of dye mixed at different consistencies.

To get a simple but beautiful gradient effect, first thoroughly soak your lace in water.

You will also need a cup of dye that has been mixed at 2 parts dye to one part water. Do NOT use straight dye, it is too thick and won’t gradient well.

Once it’s fully saturated, quickly dip one end in your dye mix. Remove it quickly.