In this section…
My Lace
Floral Bedfordshire Christening Card. (Made for the Royal Highland Show in 1990.Working instructions are in Bedfordshire Lace.)
Over the past thirty odd years I’ve made quite a lot of lace, but unless I take it out to show students it’s usually hidden away in files or drawers. So this section is an opportunity for me to give some of the lace I’ve made an airing and share it with a wider audience. I plan to show each piece of lace in full, have close-up pictures of the most interesting parts, and some background information too — why I made it, how I dealt with tricky bits and, if I designed it myself, what the inspiration was. There will also be occasional patterns. The lace will change from time to time, sometimes to fit with items on other pages, sometimes just to add variety.
I prefer working with bobbins than with a needle, so most of the lace I make is bobbin lace, but I do make some needlelace too. For bobbin lace I usually use spangled bobbins and a pillow with movable blocks so I never have to un-pin the lace, move it up, and then re-pin it. I enjoy working traditional lace, but I am also interested in ‘stretching the boundaries’ and working lace with colours and on a large scale.