The past week has been all about guipure lace – buying it, planning a skirt/dress with it, manipulating it for shape, placing it on a garment for the ‘wow’ you want. 

In the past I’ve used various laces and fine fabrics.

This peplum top made in 2015 uses a sequinned lace provided my Minerva Crafts UK.

The original version of this fabric was used for a gold dress I wore to the Minerva meetup a few years ago.
The key to making this fabric more wearable was to interline the fabric and then line it.

This top also uses a knit mesh with lace detailing made last year. For this top I only underlined the front and back bodices.

This dress made in 2014 was a remnant lace that was lined and not interlined. Quick and easy especially as I used my block pattern.

Lace comes into it’s own when you use such small pieces for bras.

 This off-white bra using pin up girls pattern wasn’t underlined

This gold bra has a light underlining.

While this dress using fabric from Selective Fine Fabrics uses a printed cutout fabric, I still had to interline it. When I bought it last year, Louisa spent time with me testing the fabric with a number of coloured poplins to find the best underlining that would still let the colours in this print pop. White underlining was the best version.

This crazy print used a bone coloured lace along the shoulders. The fit was good but I’ve since passed this dress onto someone else.

I really enjoyed blending this green Chantilly lace over blue fabric that I bought from Pitt Trading.

There’s a lot less flower placement to worry about with such a delicate lace.

Oh my goodness. in 2013 I used a corded lace on this Beatrice dress by Sew Chic patterns and tried to keep the shaped hem on the skirt and sleeves. The fit was this dress needed more work but it was worth making because it has an unusual neckline.

Navy lace pieced over satin from a design I saw on Pinterest was the inspiration for this navy lace dress using fabric from White Tree Fabrics two years ago.

 I still wear this skirt that has a few layers of fabric to make it the colour I wanted.

Both the lace and underlining fabrics had colours that I would look great in. Pairing them together resulted in a more wearable skirt.

Seriously even the lining is a bit loud, but really suited this skirt.

Lastly I’ll show you this skull lace from Minerva Crafts from a year ago.

That’s my working with lace history and now I’ve cracked working with guipure lace through Susan Khalje’s workshop so you’ll see more about this in the coming weeks.