Lace Experiments

I was really excited when I found a black polka dot net lace in my local drapery. It reminded me to some  impressive designs by Atsuko Kudo and to the task of integrating net lace into a custom creation.

While soaking the edge of some lace applique with liquid latex and glueing it to a latex garment is not a big challenge, I wanted to take a sheet of transparent latex and glue the lace behind it, so one can see the lace texture through the latex.

I cleaned the backside of two 0.25mm transparent latex pieces, put the net lace on top and soaked the lace with transparent liquid latex (top left).

On the top right is the result for a sheet of smokey latex. The dots and lace structure is barely visible.

The other example (bottom left) uses a piece of transparent pink latex that has a much better transparency.

For a final experiment (bottom right) I worked without a piece of latex and put the net lace directly on a glass surface and soaked it with liquid latex. When dry the backside has a smooth surface and the testing piece is thinner than in the previous examples.

While the results of these experiments are generally quite satisfying, two problems remain: the "laced" latex loses nearly all its ability to stretch and the "laced" side - where you still feel the lace texture - is not really comfortable on the skin. So this technique is best used sparely.

Do you know a better way to achieve similar results?