New! I've gotten a lot of mail asking how to start with bobbin lace, so I've put together a page that I hope will be helpful. You will find it here.

I just started learning to do bobbin lace on June 2, 2001.

Here is a picture of the pillow set up and working on my first bit of "real" lace (on June 11th)...
...and here is a somewhat blurry closeup of the lace itself. The pattern is "nursery lace" from The Torchon Lace Workbook by Bridget M. Cook and the thread is Anchor tatting cotton. I finished this lace (about 15 inches worth, I wanted to see how much I'd get from a yard of thread per bobbin) on the 12th and started...

... the spider bookmark from Rosemary Shepherd's Introduction to Bobbin Lacemaking. This pattern uses 20 pairs of bobbins, which is every single bobbin I own! My husband says it looks horribly complicated with all of the bobbins hanging off of it and I'm not sure when I should tell him that it's still very much a beginner piece. It took me all morning yesterday to wind the bobbins, make the pricking, and work about an inch of lace. Then I discovered an error at the third pin and had to go undo pretty much all of my work. That evening I finished the top chevron of the border. So far today (June 14) I've managed to complete about 1/3 of the interior. Whew!

I finished it on the 15th, and managed to resist taking it out of its pins until the following morning. For reference, it is resting on an 8.5x11" sheet of paper in the photograph. When I was about two-thirds of the way through I noticed I'd made a mistake way back on the second spider, which you might be able to make out on this again somewhat blurry close-up. Can I call it a design decision?

Leftover thread from the spider bookmark became a roseground exercise. Pretty, but wow does it stretch.

In December 2001 I took a wire lace jewelry workshop with Lenka Suchanek of Silver Pin Studio. Here are the pieces I made in class, and eventually other pieces as well!


emmacrew@yahoo.com

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