Bobbin Lace
I make lace! Here are some of my projects.

Serpentine

a bobbin lace bookmark in sunlight

close up bobbin lace in progress with only a few pins yet placed

bobbin lace in progress with many bobbins on the pillow

bobbin lace bookmark suspended in air with a background of sunlight on leaves

close up of colorful spangled bobbins secured with knitting stitch holders

close up of bobbin lace project about halfway done, with many pins taken out at the beginning to show the design

bobbin lace in progress, showing the whole round pillow with an array of colorful spangled bobbins fanned out

bobbin lace in progress, showing the pricking card with hand-drawn lines

bobbin lace bookmark laid horizontally on a wooden surface

bobbin lace bookmark placed inside a dungeons and dragons player's handbook

bobbin lace bookmark laid diagonally on a wooden surface

bobbin lace bookmark curled into an s-shape, highlighted by sunlight

This was a fun one. The thread is so soft and delicate that I expected to be dealing with a lot of snapped threads, but it never came to pass — not even one broken thread in the whole project! Smooth as butter. This is the first time I’ve worked a pattern that requires adding and removing gimps during the work… it went okay. There is supposedly a way to finish them off seamlessly, but I couldn’t figure it out so I just overlapped the ends which does look a tiny bit messy. Also if you look very close you can see where I accidentally pulled on the loose end of one of the gimps while I was taking pins out and it scrunched up the motif. Devastating! Overall though, I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.

Notes

Pattern: Serpentine from A Visual Introduction to Bucks Point Lace by Geraldine Stott

Thread: Brok 100/2 cotton in ecru

Gimps: 8 ply of the base thread

Pins: .5mm pins throughout

Picots: I was not consistent with the number of twists around the picots

Started: January 28, 2020

Finished: August 23, 2020

Lace Storage and Organization

You will need

  • A box (sturdier than cardboard, but probably doesn’t need to be airtight — the person I adapted this method from kept her lace in a wooden drawer)
  • ARCHIVAL QUALITY acid-free tissue paper. Don’t use some tissue paper you pulled out of the top of a gift bag. Your lace is going to be touching this surface for decades. Do it right.
  • Archival quality card stock. Again, your lace will be in contact with this so don’t skimp.
  • Tag punch
  • Hole punch, if your tag punch doesn't include a hole
  • A Sharpie for writing on the tags. Yes, specifically a Sharpie. You could try to find another pen that you're sure won't smear or rub off I guess but seriously just get a Sharpie.
  • Sturdy notebook with numbered pages and no glitter or anything that might come off
    • You could also number the pages yourself, but the numbers are important
  • A pen for writing in the notebook — any pen you like. You can use the Sharpie but it tends to show through the pages.
  • A plastic pencil case

Instructions

  1. Make some lace.
  2. In the notebook, record any information about the piece of lace you just made that you want to keep track of. Pattern, thread, date completed, etc. Make note of the page number you wrote on.
  3. Punch out a tag from the archival card stock and write the page number (or numbers, if you had a lot to say) on it with the Sharpie.
  4. Tie the tag to the lace with some thread
  5. Put down a layer of tissue paper in the bottom of the box
  6. Carefully lay the tagged lace flat on top of the tissue paper
  7. Put down another layer of tissue paper on top of the lace
  8. Put your extra tissue paper, extra card stock, tag punch, hole punch, and notebook in the box
  9. Put your pens in the pencil case and put the pencil case in the box. (Why the pencil case? Well, if you open your lace box one day to find an exploded pen, do you want it contained or not?)
  10. Make more lace, log it, tag it, and layer it with tissue paper

There you go — all your lace and everything you need for archiving it in one place.