Over the past several days, I've turned out about 1.75 m of tubular card woven red cord for a dress lace. I used 12 Z-threaded cards with two opposing strings in each, turned 180ยบ forward each turn, with a warp twined left to right.
I like the result. The cord is has both good tensile strength and a bit of stiffness. The weave is rather elegant, though a bit too tiny to capture with the not-great macro setting on my Kodak. The look is surprisingly modern, nearly like rat-tail cord, but the coefficient of friction in my cord is higher, and it doesn't slip so freakishly easily as rat-tail cord, which I consider definitely to be a feature.
To anchor the bottom of the cord inside the dress, I've used a slip knot that tightens toward the end of the cord to form a stable loop, and passed the working end of the cord through that loop. This created a rather easy way to fix the cord without worrying that a knot would pull through the eyelet and cause social difficulties at awkward moments (because Murphy's an Irishman, and if there's a poster child for sod's law, it's me).
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to lace the dress the whole way up with the new lace, yet, as the knot at the end has been difficult to get through the eyelets; I've already broken one of my lovely bone needles trying to poke the knot through this many holes. Am hoping to drive down to South River* tomorrow to get a metal aiglet that will fit the tip of the cord, so that lacing the dress will not, as I feared last night, take twice as long to lace as it did to sew it shut every time.
Overall appraisal--should be great, with the right technology.
*Grannd Companies is advertising etched silver aiglets for extremely reasonable prices, and they should be less than an hour's drive from here.
I like the result. The cord is has both good tensile strength and a bit of stiffness. The weave is rather elegant, though a bit too tiny to capture with the not-great macro setting on my Kodak. The look is surprisingly modern, nearly like rat-tail cord, but the coefficient of friction in my cord is higher, and it doesn't slip so freakishly easily as rat-tail cord, which I consider definitely to be a feature.
To anchor the bottom of the cord inside the dress, I've used a slip knot that tightens toward the end of the cord to form a stable loop, and passed the working end of the cord through that loop. This created a rather easy way to fix the cord without worrying that a knot would pull through the eyelet and cause social difficulties at awkward moments (because Murphy's an Irishman, and if there's a poster child for sod's law, it's me).
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to lace the dress the whole way up with the new lace, yet, as the knot at the end has been difficult to get through the eyelets; I've already broken one of my lovely bone needles trying to poke the knot through this many holes. Am hoping to drive down to South River* tomorrow to get a metal aiglet that will fit the tip of the cord, so that lacing the dress will not, as I feared last night, take twice as long to lace as it did to sew it shut every time.
Overall appraisal--should be great, with the right technology.
*Grannd Companies is advertising etched silver aiglets for extremely reasonable prices, and they should be less than an hour's drive from here.
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