I do wonder how many of you read that title and immediately thought of Admiral Ackbar? Just me? Never mind. 

Anyhow! What’s actually a trap, or more accurately a fake is the fan I was using as inspiration for the Fian challenge. Whoops. I spent the first chunk of my fian time working on getting my needle skills back up to snuff and then finally sat down to do my design work. Emailed the museum where it’s at to ask, as the info about it is sparse, and found out ‘oh that? Yeah. Glued together cut parchment and silk strips.’ (I may be paraphrasing the far more professional answer the lovely curator sent to me.)

Say what!? Not lace at all? A good fake? Well. Damn.

I had a bit of a think, and a bit more obsessive staring at portraits and I think I’ve come up with a plan b (which looks very much like plan a, honestly). Clearly, its trying to fake up lace. I mean CLEARLY. While there’s no real evidence for flag fans being entirely made of lace, there’s plenty of evidence for lace edges and embroidered middles. The jump from an embroidered middle to an embroidered middle with some cutwork embroidery is a gentle one, so I’m just going to keep on keeping on.

What I’m not going to keep doing, is using this as a ‘I want it to look like THIS!’ sort of guide, because needle lace on a linen ground is never going to look like this. It’s like expecting my calico to put on a sheep costume and actually look like a sheep. (Or actually wear the costume, but that’s entirely different.)

New fabric is in the mail, designs are hitting the graph paper and soon the testing and obsessive stitching can begin. I’m not sure what I want to put in that middle section, suggestions welcome!