More Free Lace

One of my father's favorite sayings was "you learn something new every day."  A typical dinnertime conversation consisted of his asking us in turn what new thing we had learned that day.  Often we had to struggle to come up with something, but usually we could think of something.  I reinforced the idea that learning was important and enjoyable - an idea that stays with me to this day.

With my latest free lace scarf, I learned that I should test the strength of all the threads and ribbons that I use.  I've made many of these and never had any trouble with thread breakage, but with this last one I did.  Not much, but enough that I couldn't ignore it.

The thread that broke was a decorative element, not structural so it wasn't necessarily a fatal flaw.  But I liked what it added so I didn't want to just cut it out.  I'd spent too much in time and materials on the scarf to just junk it, plus I really liked it.  I'd had fun working with colors outside my usual set.  What to do???  No ideas immediately came to mind.

I set it aside, tried not to think about it, and proceeded with all the other things I needed to do yesterday.  Late in the afternoon a friend came by my studio and noticed it sitting on my table.  I showed it to her,  bemoaned the thread breaking problem, and set it aside again.  Luckily though, showing it to Laura must have triggered something in the back of my mind because just after she left I had an idea for fixing it.

Here's the detail shot so you can see what I did.

I added in little "fringes" all over it.  The fringes anchor the broken places as well as adding another decorative element.

The whole thing reinforces one of my favorite art-related sayings - "no mistakes, only opportunities."