Lace Bobbin Book Case

This handy bobbin case zips can double up to also hold books, threads etc as well as all the bobbins, ideal for classes. 

I use a tapestry weight fabric for the outside, one or two layers of microfibre or polar fleece for the padding, a plain cotton which will show off the bobbins and thread, and fancy fabric sleeve strips. 

The outside fabric is 70 x 42 cm.  All the other layers are all cut 2 to 3 cm larger to allow for trimming.   The zip needs to be min 80 cm to allow for turning in the open end at the top, and to have enough to sew a tab on at the join.  A longer zip could, if you wish, continue along the top seam and completely seal the case.  A 1/4 inch seam allowance is standard.

Turn sleeve strips right side inwards and sew 1/4 inch seam along the length.  Iron seam flat.  Turn inside out.  Press. Sew 1/8 inch seam along both long edges for strength.

Place the fleece layer between 2 cotton layers, only one layer will be visible so you can use any old cotton on the reverse. 

Find the center line of the cotton/fleece/cotton layer.  Work outwards from the center and place strips 8cm, 10cm and 8cm apart.   Pin each end and along the strips. It is important that these do not move about.

Sew 1/4 inch line around the outer edges including the strips. To avoid bunching, use a walking foot on the sewing machine.  If you don't have one, add more pins and watch the layers don’t creep.

Start at one edge and sew the sleeves with a 2cm spacing to fit Midlands spangled bobbins in pairs. Test your bobbins and adjust if needed.  For my Rosaline bobbins, a 2.5cm sleeve fitted each bobbin.  

Start the top sleeve with a small stitch. Sew the reverse and forward starting stitches, and a locking reverse stitch at the lower edge.   Lift the needle and repeat on next sleeve strip down. The thread is not cut until the bottom of the 4th strip is sewn.  Trim before moving back to the top to sew the next four sleeves.  You can sew the 2cm all the way down without stopping between sleeve strips if you wish. 

Place the zip around the edges.  Snip the zip fabric a little at the curve to help it bend.  Cut a little curve around the bottom two corners to help the zip go around.  Test out the zip!  It should meet at the same place at the top corners, if not, repin and test again.  When sewing, make sure the zip doesn’t creep.

Use 1/4 inch away from the teeth to sew the zip to the ‘quilt’.

Place the top fabric (double check this is the right way around) face to face with the sleeve side of the quilt.  Leave a 20 cm gap along the top, non zipped edge for turning it inside out.  Sew all the way around with a 1/8 inch seam allowance on the zip, 1/4 along the top edge.  

Turn inside out. Check the zip closes nicely.  Sew the top open edge close. 

Use ribbon or make two handles from the same fabric to make the handles. 

The case can be used fully open, or if space is at a premium,  fold in a zig zag manner to expose each strip of bobbins as you need them. 

I organize my cases with full bobbins at the top, with the left over and gimp threads at the bottom.  

I have used these cases full of bobbins to also add books, threads, fold flat baskets etc for travel.

Any size for any where fabric baskets

 I love these fabric baskets, they always squash so nicely into a drawer. They fold flat when empty and  are made to fit exactly what goes into them.   Here’s the way I make them.  

The size of the rectangle and how big you cut the corner squares dictates the finished size.  The larger the corner square, the higher the sides.  

Start with the size you need for the base, add the height of the sides and seam allowances, this makes the starting rectangle.

Pop a zip across the top if you want a fold down basket that will carry lots of stuff. Add card for an even stiffer base. Make one slightly larger than the other to make a lid. Lots of ways to play about with this basic design.   Enjoy. 

Ten Colour Trails

I found a new menu in one of my design programs so just had to have a go.  Not as instinctive as drawing by pencil but very tidy when it came to mirroring and repeats.  

Designed with a 'radial' option, the lines I drew were mirrored and repeated around an 8 section disc to make the design with 4 full repeats consisting of two mirrored eighths in each.  Although this created a Cluny style pattern, (obviously very Muaiga), the practicalities of making it didn't quite work out as well as a hand drawn pattern this time.  

A time consuming hand drawing uses the brain to see ahead, figuring out the joins and crossings of the threads and the handy speed of the program drawing lulls one into the false sense of security because it looks so very neat and tidy!

The printed design felt almost like someone else's pattern so I used my coloured pens to identify the trails and see how they worked out.  I quite liked the coloured version so I set about winding all the matching threads using Empress, Sylco and Tanne.  They all worked happily enough together and I had a few already wound, left over from previous projects. 

Due to the variety of colours, there was no opportunity to run pairs out or through other trails and all the crossings had to be linked at the corners to keep the whole thing together.  The choice of which colour to keep on top while I worked would make it the underneath colour once turned over, so I decided to spend time at the end sewing ends into tallies to make it double sided.  It can show either side as a top side.  

The choice of colour dramatically forces some trails to the fore, and to make again in white, or maybe ombre shades of one or two colours as they go into the center would give a very different look to this pattern. 

Bobbin Rafts from Yew Scale Ruler

This time I played making bobbin rafts using an old, yew wood, scale ruler.  These were commonly used by designers, architects, machine inventors, model trains, draughtsmen and more when a large thing like a house had to be reduced and shown accurately as a drawing. 

Bobbin Lace Rafts at Work

They had to be excellent quality to take the lines marking the tiny fractions that each measure was split into.  Yew wood quality far exceeds the beech wood used for making school rulers.  I had to throw away an old ruler which didn't even measure inches properly for fear of using it by mistake!

Over the years I have squirrelled away a few light hearted tools in one of my craft drawers.  I always enjoyed making things, but age has a way of making you more careful, avoiding injury is better than time spent recovering.  The most useful is my little Archimedes screw drill.  The incredibly slow speed is controlled by light pressure on the end and it will take the smallest of drill bits for my little projects. 

Demoted several times, my big scissors have served me well and have been replaced several times so, I have no fear of using them in a way that will horrify most crafters, as you will see in this video.

The hacksaw has a fine blade.  I see it as a necessary evil, it can make short work of skin!  The trick is to draw it smoothly across the wood, not to 'saw' away like in the movies.  Too much pressure simply tears into the wood and makes it hard to hold still.  Watching a tree surgeon gave me the idea of cutting from both sides of the ruler, or using a saw on anything for that matter, because it reduces the splintered, jagged edge which often appears on the opposite side.  The narrow 'hinge' in the very centre is the last bit to be sawn and can be snapped apart easily, leaving the edges neat. 

Sandpaper is measured in 'grit', the size of the abrasive dust on the backing.  Start with the coarsest (lowest number) grit, you can feel easily which that one is.  They start about 50 grit which is like sand, and go up to 3,000 which is like hard velvet.  Many places sell a selection in a pack quite cheaply.

Link to the video on youTube of my antics this time is here:-

https://youtu.be/gUEKMAvIOZE?si=nnUsjs0f2S-5V9LQ

Broken Bobbins made into Divider Pins

Get the safety gear out folks!  

I made this video on how I make divider pins from broken bobbins and fancy little bits of wood turning.  

The Archimedes screw drill I use has been very handy for playing about with this sort of thing.  I also use it if the hole for a spangle isn't big enough for the way I spangle my bobbins (I thread twice through the hole then twist at each side, some people just thread one wire through).

I do like a fine needle for my dividers, so I found most are happy with a 0.7mm drill bit.  If this does end up being a bit loose, I thread the needle, touch lightly with a bit of Superglue and then fit that in.  The two lengths of thread can be sliced off when the glue is set.  

The 'proddlers' as I call them, also known as stillettos, take a much wider needle, sometimes you can find very thick pins about 2mm wide which do a good job.  The narrow pins are made differently to needles, they tend to bend and break rather than flex so a needle is always a better choice. 

Needles which have the eye as narrow as the shaft are best to use, the ones with the wide eyes can split the wood when forced in, and the sharp end tends to have a bit of a wiggle if you drill large enough hole to fit the wide eye. 

Bone is really hard to drill, I haven't managed to drill one successfully yet.  I am not allowed to play with power tools, so broken bone bobbins are not something I can manage to make dividers out of. 

When I am putting the needle into the hole, you can see in the video I place it upright on the table, simply because I'm used to doing it that way.  The block of ethafoam does have some bobbin size holes for shoving the bobbin bit into to hold it upright if you find that easier.  

The little nylon hammer I use is a lightweight even by little hammer standards, I tease, rather than hit the end of the pliers to help knock the needle deeper into the bobbin, this is not where you want to split the wood so you are feeling for the needle to hit the end of the hole.  

The sandpaper I use to smooth the sawn off end is a 400 grit, you could use an emery board if you have one handy.  Sometimes the sawn end is a different colour wood to the rest because polish or accumulated handling will have deepened the colour of the grain.  To tone down the newly exposed bit, use some beeswax, a bit of oil or, in one experiment I tried, a bit of moisturiser!

Remember when the video goes in and out of focus, frustrating I know, it is hard for a mobile phone camera to maintain focus on small things, it keeps trying to focus on the larger areas. 

I am not excited by the thought of spending my life tweaking videos, tied to a computer screen instead of making lace and enjoying life, so I make the videos in one take, usually the first one gets enough information across for me to upload that one.  If it helps you in some small way, then that's enough for me.  

Link to the video here:-

https://youtu.be/FvNkhskQnXA?si=HtBYo3Ag1Gdc3oge

Christmas Stocking with Photo

I never thought I would be the one to post a Christmas related pattern in August but it does take longer to make bobbin lace than most hobbies when it comes to making such delicate lace decorations. 

The traditions of the Christmas Stocking varies a lot, depending from where you source your information nowadays.  The main tradition as a child was to have some 'stocking filler' presents to keep the little ones quiet till it was a more reasonable time for parents to get up. 

 

The stockings, or socks, can now be bought as huge red sacks pretending to be socks to stuff more things in, completely ignoring the original traditions and stories which I think is a shame, we lose so much empathy in the race to go bigger and better.  For me as a child, it was one of my own socks hung at the end of the bed. Contents varied little from year to year, a satsuma, a little bag of peanuts and raisens, and coloured crayons which were replaced with a fountain pen as I got older. My brothers got a little car, or lego in theirs, I preferred my pens!

This simple Torchon pattern can be enlarged to be made with thicker crochet thread to give a more solid feel.  

If you feel brave enough, use the blank stockings to pop in some spiders, change the ground, make stripes of half stitch and cloth stitch, dot some rosegrounds about. 

Ideal for covering in sequins and beads, use coloured and sparkly gimp and edge passive threads, just chuck everything fun at these little stockings. 

This prints at A5.

Start by placing 2 pairs open around all the top pins.  Half stitch around the pin. 

Place a temporary pin just below the top row of pins and hang four pairs of passives open(You may leave these out if you wish).  Twist one pair of the passives around a pearl headed pin and push into the pillow.  This will maintain the tension as you work the other passive pair. Cloth stitch the two left pairs towards the left side. Do not work the last pair. Repeat on other side.  

Each ground pair should have a twist ready for the half stitch ground.  Do not twist the passive pairs. 

Take one pair from each pin and half stitch, pin, half stitch (Torchon ground) across the next row. 

At the edge, use a temp pin and hang one pair on each side.  Work hs, pin, hs with the edge pin outside the passive pairs and cloth stitch back through the passives into the ground. 

Work the ground and stop before the gimp or passives which will surround the three spiders as shown.   (You may leave these out if you wish).

Add four pairs of passives open around a temporary pin at the top of the centre block, cloth stitch through these to the outer pins of the blocks as shown by the coloured line.  Place a twist on all ground pairs, not the passives.

If you choose a thicker gimp thread (single thread) add an extra twist before lifting the left hand bobbin, pass the gimp thread between the two ground pairs and place two twists afterwards.

At the final center point where the passives/gimp meet, cross them and work a little way back upwards along the line of the existing passives/gimp. Throw back the pairs for cutting off later when it is easier to tension them after more ground is made.

If you have used two passives, throw back one bobbin at a time to reduce thickness. 

The edge passives/gimp make a crossover in the center (doubling the thread) and continue back to the opposite edges to continue down the stocking.  One pair on each side will need throwing out where the stocking narrows after the top section, this can be knotted, or carried alongside the passive pairs and thrown out after half inch or so.

If you are working in one colour, throw out the edge passives after working along the crossover.  This means you can use the ground pair as the new passives which you would otherwise need to throw out at the bottom of the first section where it narrows.

The heart can be worked either by starting at the top two points, working to the valley pin where one pair will take over as a worker and the other worker becomes the center ground pair, or diagonally from one side where one worker remains constant.  The second option is best if you wish to change the colour of the heart ground.   

The foot:-  add pairs from temporary pins to work the edge pair, through the passive and into the ground.  

The heel:- work to the last pin inside the passives, take the pair which is to be thrown out and work it to the edge, hs, pin , hs with the outer worker and the outer worker returns to lay on the inside of the passives.  The next pair to be thrown out on the diagonal is worked out to the edge, hs, pin, hs with the outer worker which returns to lay on the inside of the passives and so on.  This is the way the bottom edge is also worked.