Bobbin lacemaking uses thread, and so you need scissors. I must admit that I bite off lengths of thread for winding onto bobbins, which is naughty of me. But I do need scissors to trim the threads after finishing the lace.
The first stage of making lace after getting hold of a pattern is to prick it. You can use a needle for this, but there is also a special tool called a pricker. This is just a needle set into a wooden handle. You should be able to buy it from a lace supplier, and it should be cheap. It certainly makes pricking a pattern easier.
When making lace, it is sometimes helpful to stick a pin between groups of bobbins, as some are involved in the current piece of lace working and the rest are not. This can stop you from basic errors, such as working too many, or too few, pairs in a row. You can just use ordinary pins, of course. But bigger pins are perhaps better for holding bobbins, or, in my case, not ripping holes in my sleeves. I must emphasise that it is not essential to use pins in this way, and anyway ordinary pins work fine (I could always roll my sleeves up...) But if you see a nice hat pin or other decorative pin, then lacemaking is a way to use it.
This is a piece of equipment for a very specific use. Certain types of lace require you to join one piece of lace to another, or one part of the lace to itself, further along the working. The technique for this is called a sewing, and it requires a crochet hook. The crochet hook itself must be very small - just big enough to catch the thread and no more. An ordinary crochet hook would be too big to manipulate among all those threads.
You can also add beads to lace using a crochet hook - click here for see how.
There are other pieces of equipment used by lacemakers, or at least, sold to them. The only time I tried a mechanical bobbin winder, I decided it was a lot easier to wind by hand. I've bought a few bobbin tidies, which are supposed to hold groups of bobbins securely while you work on other bobbins, but have not yet got the knack of using them. There is a pin lifter, for removing pins - I find a thumb nail perfectly adequate. But other people may disagree with me on all that.
There are also things that you can buy for using or displaying lace, such as plastic bookmark cases, or fan sticks for lace fans, or frames, or cards, or ... I suggest that you make some simple lace first. Then you can browse among lace supplier websites, or go to a lace fair, and wonder if that would be useful, or fun.
Finally, there are a lot of lace books. These can also teach you new lace techniques, or a different style of lace. They are also a source of new patterns. These are certainly worthwhile, but I admit that I have a few which I have not started, and I have tried one or two, and decided that this lace style was not for me. But some have been most useful, and indeed, I learned lacemaking entirely from books.
© Jo Edkins 2016 - return to lace index