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Bobbin lace making with two pairs, what can you learn from it

Bobbin lace making with two pairs, what can you learn from it?

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Why should you dedicate more time to two pairs?

As some of you know. I’m trying for quite some time to rediscover the beginnings, the starting points, in learning of bobbin lace making. The goal of the quest was to find the answer to a, seemingly, simple question. Why is it so hard to make tallies? Why don’t we develop skills to make them at the beginning of lace making journey? Why are we so anxious to make this big loop in learning?

It looks to me like no one tells you that you need to develop skillfulness in your hands first to be able to work effortlessly later. Maybe I overheard that, but for sure I don’t remember anyone telling me to take it slow and be methodical on my learning path.

Sure enough, the half stitch looks better than any two pair technique, and spiders are mesmerising. The problem occurs when going back to two pairs and you become aware of a black hole in your knowledge and skills.

Therefore, going back to the roots is always a good idea!

Going back to the roots, what do I mean by that?

Going back means going to the beginnings of the learning process. We all start with two pairs. The origins of lace are rather simple too. So why not going back and rediscover the works of two pairs?

We have this subconscious belief that this is not lace. In other words, it’s not lacy enough for us sophisticated people of 21 century. It’s not what we envision as lace.

The saddest thing is that our own beliefs and convictions are keeping us from developing the skills we need to be good at making what we love. In our case, this is bobbin lace making, but we can expand these findings to everything else in our lives.

What I discovered until now, my path has not come to an end yet, is that working with only two pairs is way more complicated than one would think. And also there is no wonder we don’t know how to use our hands properly in hand lace making. No one managed to tell us we need to invest time and effort into our basics.

Looking at old fashion bobbin lace

When we look at, for example, 16th-century bobbin lace patterns. On the paper, they look so plain, straightforward. But when you look at the lace made out of that pattern. You all of a sudden realize there is no plainness and at the end, only the best designs survived centuries.

When you relax and let go of your prejudices, you notice that simple things do not necessary look uninteresting, or basic. When trying to recreate becomes obvious that simple is not always simple work. You need to think hard to make it work. You need to be innovative to find solutions.

And once you go through a couple of things like that, you start to look at bobbin lace making from a different perspective. You start seeing how things could be turned your way as a maker, without compromising the outcome. Everything somehow becomes less stressful. The workflow becomes smoother and easy to follow.

To sum up the two pair journey

I took December as my walk through the kingdom of bobbin lace snowflakes with only two pairs. Intentionally starting simple, with just the chain. It was stressful on giving up the prejudice I wanted to make something spectacular right at the beginning. It took me time to convince myself to take it slow.

I started doing Christmas ornaments with only the cord. Then I slowly added the bling factor, and the results were astonishing. As I slowly started adding a new technique with every new version, ornaments started looking more interesting and intricate.

On this quest, I noticed a tremendous improvement in managing different pattern requirements, although all of my patterns were extremely basic. I was able to make decisions on the go to implement strategies and techniques as I was working along. Don’t get me wrong, planning is essential, and you need to be meticulous for things to look good.

By the end of December, I noticed an increase in adaptation to different pattern requirements. I would say when you put enough time and effort into something your thinking becomes flexible, almost like an elastic.

Also when going to other projects, you notice you look at things differently. You start to approach to lace making from your own, innovative perspective, which enables you to be unique and your own in the end product. Little things count more than one would think.

Looking from the perspective of developing skills in hands, I have no words.  In the end, I had no problems what so ever to make snowflakes with ease, no stress, no gadgets to help. The only thing I would like to say don’t go to lunch in the middle of making a lief tally or try to answer the phone.

All it took was a month of short and simple projects. Each made in one afternoon, that’s all that it was needed. The only downside to this experiment is that I made to many patterns, and haven’t managed to make even a half of the ones I made. For each one of them, there are at least three to five outcomes in my head and if someone else would make those patterns completely different lace ornaments would come out.

To recap all this writing.
  • Don’t go past two pairs too fast, when starting.
  • Take your time, explore and gain some hand skills you will need later on.
  • Be relaxed when planning how to get through the pattern.
  • Choose short projects in which you will gain consistency and perseverance.
  • And above all have fun and enjoy your projects. Make them custom to your needs and your lifestyle.

Till next time,

Have fun, be creative and enjoy your crafting.

Sabina

 
Christmas decorations with Bobbin Lace

Ice Crystals in Christmas Bobbin Lace Ornaments

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Some of you probably noticed my Instagram posts with snowflakes. Lots of snowflakes, more like a snow blizzard.

Ice crystals bobbin lace

What is unknown is that I used pictures of actual water crystals for inspiration. Here I would like to say, thank you, to photographers who made those and made this whole thing possible.

When it comes to techniques and patterns step back to the past was made. For inspiration, I took this book from the 16th century. The book was cold “Le Pompe”, published in Venice 1557. It is considered the earliest pattern book for bobbin lace.

Lace made back then was for today’s standards primary. Sometimes we find it difficult to comprehend that. We would always like things to be a bit more complicated and intriguing than they are.

Let’s move on to the most important thing here.

Pictures:

Today’s post is a short one.

In the next one, I will take time and write more about the process of progressing through the two par bobbin lace techniques. How this approach made it easier to make all of this snowflakes.

For everyone who doesn’t know what techniques I am talking about here is the link to the starting post about this, let’s call it, a quest.

Anyways the making of all these snowflakes was a breeze. The only problem is I haven’t managed to make not even half of the patterns I made.

Till next time,

have fun, be creative and enjoy the holiday time.

Sabina

 
Bobbin lace art foil print

Bobbin lace foil art print

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In today’s project, I’ll show you how I use my handmade lace in different ways to gift and greet people that are dear to me.

I was usually using some rather complex techniques to achieve this. Jet I recently realized you don’t need them, you have everything in reach of your hands.

Now let’s get to work. In today’s post, we will shed some light on a quest to turn lace you already made into a print project. There are endless possibilities to use this idea. And the best part is, for home use you don’t need a professional editing program.

What do we need?
  1. Lace you made in bright colour, but not shiny
  2. Dark surface, it can be colour paper for the background
  3. Smartphone for taking a picture and filtering the picture (don’t worry it’s simple and straightforward
  4. computer to edit the greetings card in a “Word Document”
  5. simple computer picture editing program like Windows Paint
  6. Cardstock to print on (use a toner laser printer if you don’t have it at home most copy machines are of that kind). And paper should be as smooth as possible, preferably glossy.
  7. heat transfer foil or art foil
  8. In the end, you need a laminator and some baking paper to protect the laminator.
And now the process

You need a lace you made in light colour. It would be best white, but cream or light pastels work well too, try to avoid gold, silver, actually try to avoid shiny threads in general for this project.

Put it on a contrasting dark background, a sheet of paper is OK, as long as it is dark. And now all you have to do is to take a picture with your phone.

Bobbin lace ornament

Bobbin lace ornament

In the phone gallery use a picture that is the best and edit it, first, you need to trim it, I like a 1:1 picture ratio. It gives you a chance to use space more efficiently.

Cropping bobbin lace picture

Cropping bobbin lace picture

Next step is editing in your phone gallery. In the filter section chose Mono filter. Go for the most prominent black and white look. In my Huawei, it is called Trk.

Here you can play with sliders to get the optimum result. Adjust the contrast and Brightness to your needs. Remember we are aiming for a completely black and white picture. Do your best to save you work later on.

Now we are done with the phone part, and we transfer the picture to our computer. Here we open the Word program (that is a text editing program).

It is the time to figure out what kind of greeting card you are making, that means you already know how big format you require. In the Page Layout, you make the changes needed. Please be careful when it comes to edges. Printers want them, need them, their work depends on them. Don’t erase them. The minimum for an outer document edge is 1 cm (I don’t know how much is it in inches, actually it is a little less than a half of inch).

Figuring out what you want in Word document

Figuring out what you want in Word document

You know how you freeze when you here some fancy words? Don’t worry, no need for freezing or anxiety. We will start now with photo editing. I know how intimidating this may sound, have no fear, simplicity is my good friend.

We need to open, kind of a picture program. Windows has this dead program (no longer updated but still available) called Paint. You can look for it through the search bar or in the Start menu under Windows utilities&tools. If you don’t have it, you can get it for free.

Here you open or paste your chosen picture.

Select all, and with the right click, you’ll find in the opened menu at the bottom Invert colour. Half of your editing is done, be proud of your self.

The other half is kid’s stuff. If there are inconsistencies and black or grey colour appears where it shouldn’t. Use the eraser tool. And that is the whole editing shebang.

Snapseed users follow these steps:

This is only for people that have Snapseed App on the phone. You open the picture in the app

  • Open tools, and go for a black and white filter, chose the most prominent. And play with settings like Brightness and Contrast.
  • To invert the colours, you go to tools and open Curves. Tap the last icon that looks like a swatch, and chose Neutral, you get only two buttons, upper right and lower left. Slide the bottom left up and upper right down. I hope this makes sense. You’ll see colours change, black becomes white, and white becomes black.
  • Now you need to clean up the parts that haven’t turned up as expected. You can do this with the healing tool or a brush. If a picture was not perfect, you need to use both of them.

Here we go back to Word and actually, make the card. I will be extremely narrowly oriented. There could be done so much more with this approach.

  • Paste or insert the edited picture into the document to the desired position.
  • If you have additional text in mind now is the time to do it.

And print away.

One more thought, if you plan to print the inside or back of the card, depends on what you have in mind. You need to think out exactly how things are going to be done and WRITE IT DOWN. If one paper needs to go through the printer more than once, write down exactly how it needs to be feed into the printer the second time.

The best solution is to practice on a plain sheet of paper.

The last step brings in some bling to the whole thing. Laminating with heat transfer foil or art foil, call it what you wish or according to your geography.

Be creative when picking up the foil. I opted for boring to be able to show it easier. I was wrong. It would be more prudent to go crazy with white paper and crazy foil. Anyway, let’s move on.

Using baking paper when laminating is a good idea. It prevents foil to be bunched up by spinning rollers in the laminator. If by any chance you have anything printed and not covered with art foil, you need to protect your laminator rollers from ink to stick on them. If by any chance this happens, you will have to clean the laminator, trust me you don’t want that.

Laminating Bobbin lace art print

Laminating Bobbin lace art print

When choosing the paper go for glossy cardstock, this will give you crisp foiling. I didn’t get it when I was looking for it and went for plain paper card stock. What came out looks like a glittery retro filter. And I like it a lot. Thinking about it, that is just the look for this project.

What would you say?

Have fun, be creative, loosen up and enjoy as much as possible.

Till next time.

Sabina

 
Bobbin Lace Pattern making

Designing your own bobbin lace pattern

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Bobbin Lace pattern making

As a lot of you have probably noticed. I make mine designs on my own. Often they are some crazy concoctions of different styles from all over the world and above all from different times. There is some seriously twisted mind behind all that. Anyways there is an important thing to know before you make the bobbin lace pattern or design.

You need to know how to make bobbin lace and what is the purpose of your product. Have you ever found the pattern where you need days to figure it out and then it turns out the one that made it had no clue what they are doing.

And there is a trap waiting for you somewhere down the lane. When you start adding elements into the design. There are instances when less is, actually, more. You don’t want to suffocate your work with too many elements, sometimes to the point where the whole design loses its meaning.

Sometimes it is so hard to keep back and view things from a perspective. More often then not I doubt in my point of view, do I see things right? Am I too tacky with color or size? Is there too much bling? Does my story tel anything? Am I boring? Boring sometimes is the way to go, but mostly not. What I wanted to say is, be brave and try to make yours by hand. It does not matter if it looks ugly and unprofessional. I’ll give you one of my examples. You shouldn’t be ashamed. Especially when you are using the result daily, show it proudly. This particular item is on my mother’s cardholder. Used for years and it still holds its shape.

In the pictures above you can see how difficult it is when working with white to a cream thread on a white surface. For this particular project, I didn’t have any pastel color cardstock at hand. In the beginning, you don’t notice anything but, in the long run, your eyesight is hurting.

I’ve decided to give my Christmas Ornaments patterns for free. I hope that many of you could make your homes shine with your effort.  I wouldn’t like to be everything described above for someone, but I’m quite sure my patterns will meet the criteria.

Bobbin lace pattern will be in PDF printable file. All you need to buy is some heavy paper (card stock, go for pastel colors) and matte protective foil. Pastel color is not just for the looks. Trust me your eyes will be grateful for this detail. To prevent color transfer use clear contact paper. When buying go for the matte option, again your eyes need protection.

I do plan to release some other bobbin lace patterns. To follow that follow me on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.

Let’s finish today’s post.

I wish you all a very successful and stress-free summer.

Till next time.

xoxo,

Sabina

Bobbin Lace For Christmas

Christmas and gifts

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For Christmas, we tend to gift our close ones and also not so close people. And sometimes it happens you don’t have the time nor energy to make it look special. And we all know how important it is to make people feel good and for most special. Remember small gifts are of greater importance than we think. I am convinced that every one of us would like to get those small insignificant gifts nicely presented just to make us feel good because in reality we do not long for a gift, but rather a small token of attention. And those need to be well presented, they need to tell us that someone made an extra step just to make our day better.

So this year I came across an idea when working on a project. Sometimes being cheap and messy is a good thing, who would have thought of that? One would wonder what that means, cheap stands for me not being ready to buy thread in according colour for bobbin lace ornaments and then only god knows when it is going to be used up (according to my experience on holy never), and messy stands for colouring them with some fabric paint that I had at my hand.

Playing with Christmas GIF

Playing with Christmas GIF

Then, of course, comes this weird idea why not printing on some small gift bags that I had on hand. The results are so great looking small gift bags that I decided to share them with the world.

To see bigger pictures click on one and scroll.

Anyone that came by, started asking me if I could do this on a bigger scale because this is too beautiful not to be put into circulation. Of course, inquiries were made and yes everything is possible today. Next year you can expect completely new and unique designs for sale on Amazon, but meanwhile, we can appreciate some more pretty photos.

To see bigger pictures click on one and scroll.

There are some real-life example pictures still missing and also the representation of the original project that started this. All these things can be expected in the next post. For the time being, you can subscribe to my Newsletter to keep you updated on the progress of Amazon store and other projects that are in the making.

 

Best wishes to all, Sabina.

Bobbin Lace Bead Bracelet

I`m back

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After a year from hell, I`m back. When you have an autoimmune disorder sometimes your life looks like a joke. And you are the joke, just to be clear. During this period of time there was lots of time to think about everything, what are you supposed to do if you can’t do anything, right? But let’s leave this misery behind and move into some joyful themes and times.

By now it should be clear, that I really like bobbin lace and I like it when it is used in everyday life. Being aware of the time, skill and knowledge that are invested in this ancient trade it is actually priceless, and there is not a lot of people that can afford these things. Since this is one of the origins of the lace we know today, some refer it as the real lace, although any lace is real as it can be.

We, that is most of the women population, like good lace on and around us, it’s such a girly thing, especially when they make us look good. The decision was made, to make myself a bracelet with a new approach of adding beads, just to make me feel better and some steps towards normality would be made. At the end, I didn’t like the approach but I liked the bracelet.  This was for the first time I tried to sketch before even starting anything.

Sketch

Sketch

The only problem is the working process, that started in the last days of May and finished only recently in October. Instead of being finished in a couple of days. But let’s not complain, and rather appreciate the progress. The result is so stunning, that it would be a shame, to hide it. Of course, the first thought, when you see a bracelet is a Bridal Jewellery. But lately, I’m starting to understand Iris Apfel when she says “More is more and less is a bore.”, especially when it comes to accessories. Ladies, we only have one life to figure it out what suits us, be brave and experiment. Sure, sometimes it will come out as a failure but in the long run, the new Irises will be born.

Bobbin Lace Bead Bracelet

Bobbin Lace Bead Bracelet

When taking a photo of the bracelet my mother commented something that made me think. She said something in the line of, how great would she felt if she would get some kind of cup with this kind of sleeve on it, and at the end, she said that this kind of gift does not need to be wrapped.

We all like gifts. And if gifts would have had a certain allure to them even before opening them, they would be so much worthier. This conversation launched an avalanche of thoughts.

You know how sometimes you get something and you would like to walk around with your gift and showing it to all of the worlds if that would be possible. I’m not talking just about the bare gift, but the packaging too. Now comes the sickening thought, wouldn’t it be nice if there would appear a new line of gift bags that would be different, like a fresh breeze. To help you out when you don’t have the time, or talent to make the thing look good. I don’t want to offend anyone, but sometimes I swear I’m so much worse than all that, it almost looks like I’m making a joke out of myself in the first place and then of everyone else around me.

In the present day’s thanks, to all the progress, it is a perfect timing for thinking about that. Today we live in time and era of technology, we all should be grateful for that. Almost everything is within a reach of our fingertips. And things can be done that was recently not even possible. Enough said I went to work. Please accept my sincere apology for this extremely rough sketch of what was in my mind, I’ll do much better in the next post.

Sketch of upcoming project

Sketch of upcoming project

Today it is possible to print practically everything you want on to anything. Now I do not know about you but I prefer cotton gift bags over the paper ones. They could be reused, washed, ironed, worn over and over again and you really have to overdo it to destroy it versus the paper ones. Now comes the funny part, why wouldn’t they be printed with some occasion appropriate lace? And all the remaining bobbin lace makers out there could easily gift their friends with something that represents them, their passion. Of course, this would not be meant only for those ladies but for anyone that likes unique and beautiful things. Not too tacky, appropriate to any time of the day and every occasion and attire.

Let’s end this post for today and continue in the following days. I wish to everyone a wonderful and successful day, preferably a week (now, would that not be great when we all would have only successful weeks from now on?). Well, that’s something that needs some serious work.

Best wishes to all, Sabina.

It’s that time of the year

It’s that time of the year

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In the previous post I said I have no valid pictures of my first ordered christmas work. It sort of encouraged me to go and search for all the pictures in my folders. And after two days of search I managed to find some decent enough to go public with (sadly a couple of them are lost for ever).

Anyhow it would be so nice to have that kind of decorations on your christmas tree. In my case that is impossible because I have furry assistant that does not approve any of it. He always blames the aliens and stares at me with the most innocent kitty eyes. Putting that all aside, working on pictures I started to drool how nice and magical it would look on actual christmas tree. Thinking to myself, why would I keep that only to myself, why wouldn’t I rather share that with everyone?

Only requirement my customer had in the order was that I have to use silver metallic thread. And thru that I found out my eyes are not invincible. Working with metallic thread that reflects back light, and you do have to be precise, which means you do strain your eyes quite a bit. Lesson learned. So anyone that would like to decorate your tree this way please be nice to everyone and choose white linen thread. It will look just as cool and there will be added some vintage vibe with some serious class.

Are you ready?

Lets start with the first couple of boring ones that were made exactly by patterns. At the beginning I was so insecure and unrelaxed.

With this next one I started noticing that shapes are not very well thought out. And I need to relax my work in any possible way. Being too stressed out about exact position of pins and never satisfied with mirroring halves of the design ( I know, I know, I already stopped).

Convincing myself to go ahead and finish these next two patterns, that look good on the paper, but I had a hunch, that they will be too cramped when finished. O boy was I right about that. In the whole order these two were the hardest to even finishing them (in both cases I almost backed off in the middle). This made me realize, lace should never be too heavy. Lace is something that is airy and subtle, just like snowflakes.

All this thinking and moralizing around lace made me research new techniques from Europe, mostly German, French and Italian, I was intrigued especially with lacing technique Cantu. Cantu is a form of tape lace, what surprissed me is that it is very free and you are not determined where pins should go, you kind of stand there on your own and you call your own choices. That most definitely was not my strong point. Starting with the easy German patterns, that got me thinking about the general workflow, which should be easy and looking intricate. Here we have one design made in two different ways. Looking nothing alike.

Next two I like the most from the German patterns. Snowflake which is absolutely perfect and first heart design that I actually liked.

Now here comes something that made me proud of myself. Here I tried shyly stepping into Cantu technique with absolutely untypical design. Since this whole design is prety heavy I somehow tried to figure out how to make it work. The outer edge of the heart was made with enormous amount of improvisation and something I saw on one of the French websites. Despite all the heaviness it looks very good and is somehow well balanced design. End result sort of reminds me of Christ’s Heart which would also work very well as a “heavy duty” lace applique.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Working my way through that order I somehow managed to think about the perfect Christmas tree, what is it that should not miss on it? Well of course it is an angel, and in my eyes one is not enough. There must be at least wishful three, who are going to call all the others to join the party. Still struggling with a lack of ease, I decided to really start working on Cantu technique. I took my time and after a week of practice there were some really good results, which shows well on the angel that prays.

Angel in combination with copper metallic thread bugged me with the question, how to manipulate different color threads through the pattern without compromising the shape or colour scheme. Therefore I went with the easiest patterns I could find. Honestly I was satisfied with results and already thinking how to improvise in much more complicated patterns.

With next two I tested myself if I perhaps changed my mind on too busy and heavy patterns. The answer is no. I don’t like neither of them. Bobbin lace needs to be to certain extent simple and well thought out, especially when it comes to patterns with more different components. OMG sometimes I feel like an idiot that doesn’t know when to stop (my sincere apologies on that).

Coming close to an end it struck me that I haven’t made not even one extremely traditional design. From anthropological and ethnological point of view Slovenians fall for hearts and carnations. That is one of the most common traditional designs used through the history up to this day. It is so interesting to watch people in Slovenia how they can not go past the red carnation at least by stopping if not buying one. I found the pattern on line and this time I thought I’ll just resize it. It never goes that easy does it? At the end I had to re-draw the whole design by hand to fit. Honestly I liked the whole thing how it came out.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Did I mention that I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to stop. Here we have the proof. I saw this design somewhere online and I made a sketch of only one point of the star. Because I was cleaning the disc and history at the computer, couldn’t find the site any more. Trust me I tried hard. Anyhow, instead of mowing on, like any normal person, I persisted. Guess what kind of solution popped up? “Geometry will resolve all of my problems.” Yes my lovelies you’ve read it right. It was extremely relaxing hour of calculating and drawing the pattern and I was even more delighted when everything came out just perfect.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Finally we are coming to the end. Where my favorite piece is. I found the design on pinterest. Of course it had to be altered to fit in to my 7 cm circle. In my honest opinion this pattern was made by someone with a good eye for balance. I am not sure if this maybe was not made by a professional. As I fell in love with the drawn plan, I even more liked the finished product, pure perfection and another good example how modern lace should look like.

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Bobbin Lace Christmas Decorations

Finally we came to an end. I hope everyone enjoyed this long never ending post, at least some of the pictures look good. Please enjoy your upcoming holidays and make them as glam as you like.