Lyrebirds from Gina

Here is another set of Doilies from Gina, who has the Patra's Place blog. I cannot wait until she gets her digital camera up and running again - although some of the smaller ones could be scanned - hint, hint. And then loaded onto your blog. :)

Gina has a few particular themes she likes - including Australiana, and these Lyrebirds fitted in well there. She has the same design worked by different people in different colours - and I have to say I like the first of these two better:

This is the second:

The first one comes from a Duchesse set (have I got that spelling right????), which has two of these smaller doilies with the larger one:

Firstly, some thoughts on how I copy stuff like this:

The first two images were too big for a scanner. So all I did was put them on the floor and stand above them, taking a flash photo with the digital camera, and later cropped it onscreen. I do a lot of my student work like this - it is quick, easy, and gives a good result with my middle-of-the-range camera. The real trick is being at right angles - in other words directly above it, not off to the side.

It was useful that the carpet was a dark brown, and non-reflective, but not essential.

For the smaller doiley, Gina scanned it and sent the scan to me. Which is probably a better result for seeing absolute detail of the stitches, and the colour may be a little better, and the whole a lot crisper - but both methods are okay for me. Just scanning only works with small items or to give detail from larger items. And some of the coronation/royalty stuff you have, Gina, would look stunning scanned.

That's one of Gina's other themes - Royalty. But I reckon we should all go over to Patra's Place and beg Gina to take photos ASAP of her 1930s (I think) aprons. Or else I will have to visit again with my camera. :)

Secondly, I thought these were the same Doiley, just with different edges added by the embroiderer. But, when I look at them on screen, it seems the outline is a little different (and possibly therefore earlier), for the highly-coloured one, as opposed to the Duchesse set. I had heaps of fun with just the quick look at this collection - getting serious about the various influences on the linen through the first half of the 1900s would be fascinating.

Thirdly - why Lyrebirds???? Even (for those overseas), what is a Lyrebird???

Well, that is a whole new post. Soon.