I started costuming long ago, during my last year at school when I wanted to do some LARP and dress cool for it. Originally I didn‘t care much for what fabrics I used, or what kind of embellishments. Then I started studying art history and realized that your run of the mill 70ies crochet lace looked simply stupid when trying for medieval impressions. That‘s when the whole thing started and I got into costuming for real.

As I am an avid needleworker, I learned to embroider and crochet before I even started school, I wanted to find out whichever embellishment technique was the most appropriate for the style I was aiming for and tried to learn it. Eventually, as I realized that many of the old lacemaking techniques were on the brink of going extinct, as the old ladies knowing how to do them didn‘t have anyone to teach. That‘s when I started collecting lacemaking techniques without thinking of the costumes they might be useful for. Originally this site, the Spitzenkiste (box of lace), was simply to collect my ventures into lace territory in the times when I wrote my little book about the tatted lace of Mlle. Riego. The header picture is a sample by the way. Many of the old pages will be moved over to WordPress in the next weeks, new content will be about the costumes I sew at the moment.

In case you‘re interested in the booklet: Viktorianisches Occhi

(the link leads to the Big A because I think that‘s easiest for international readers, it‘s not an affiliate link)