aliled ~fibercrafts (EXCEPT knitting/crochet): Q1

[yhlee]

Hello! After polling the comm and listening to feedback comments, we're going to try this: every quarter we'll have a single "roundup" post where any discussion of allied fibercrafts can go EXCEPT knitting/crochet. My instinct (and the general sentiment) seems to be that knitting/crochet will take over otherwise, and are well served elsewhere on the net. Now, if you're dealing with attaching a crocheted lace by sewing it to a top or something, that's fine, but maybe not DEEP DRIVE INTO AMIGURUMI.

I'll also link the latest roundup fibercraft post in the sticky/profile as well as tagging them.

If you could separate out discussion of individual crafts into their own threads (more than one if necessary), we'll try that and see how it goes!

Examples of allied fibercrafts: bobbin lacemaking, tatting, weaving, dyeing, spinning, embroidery, probably a whole bunch more I'm omitting.

Comments

bobbin lacemaking

[yhlee]

I have obtained bobbins, some instructional books, and even a lacemaking pillow (although it is "filled" with a quasi-dome of styrofoam). The pillow might be terribad or might turn out to work well, I guess we'll find out!

I have ambitions of (a) lacemaking (b) hand-dyeing/painting it, but may founder on (a). I am no doubt overly ambitious but, I mean. It's basically like knot/braid theory (math). You can cross over, cross under, do weird knotty thing as you cross (which itself simplifies into cross over or cross under), or go ~parallel and not cross at all. Everything else is practice/details/muscle memory?

(I am thinking about Reidemeister moves haha.)

Re: bobbin lacemaking

[rugessnome]

I don't have much exposure to knot or braid theory (I shall have to look more into Reidemeister moves) but in what I've seen re lace almost everything* in bobbin lace (at least things that stay in the body of the lace--the bobbins do get hitches to keep the thread on) is more braids than knots. Until there's a "gimp" thread involved, all beginner stuff, at least, looks to be comprised of two elementary crossing movements (only one is properly a "cross" in bobbin lace) made with two pairs/four total bobbins. There's just many different ways to combine those, and questions of tensioning the work and such.

Which instructional books do you have? (I have Dye and Thunder's Beginner's Guide..., which I think, irrelevantly, is a pretty splendid combination of co-author names, and a slim IOLI book primarily by Karen Thompson.)

I've heard decent things about and had a reasonably good experience (over nine samples so far) with a foam pillow, but it probably depends on what type of foam and what qualities it has. Hopefully if it was marketed as a lace pillow it will be a good type of foam for the purpose (in mine, if I'm remembering correctly, the foam has a lot of somewhat coarse visible air bubble-holes at the surface, and can be very slightly deformed (temporarily/elastically) with squeezing. It's not squeaky like eg styrofoam coolers. Foam is kind of hard to describe I guess? I didn't notice any pin holes when I removed the cloth cover after some use trying to figure out what was rough underneath it. (it was the dome shaping cuts.))

(for some reason I am tired right now and I feel like I am punctuating weirdly in particular; apologies for any confusing bits or other errors.)

*...probably sewings are different? I have not done them, and I have only read about the type used to join something like a mat made by mitering an edging multiple times. I haven't really researched tape laces, although I'm aware they are apt to contain a lot of sewings.

Re: bobbin lacemaking

[yhlee]

Dye & Thunder is an awesome combination of co-author names!

I have Doris Southard's Bobbin Lacemaking, most of whose examples strike me as...frankly kind of ugly, but if it shows the techniques, sure! Also another beginner book thast I am failing to locate because I put it in the proverbial Safe Undisclosed Location. :p

I also have, not really instructional, Pat Earnshaw's Youghal and Other Irish Laces. These strike me as GORGEOUS but the text (slender) seems more of a catalogue of types plus history, with only a brief section on methods.

ETA: Aha, found the other intro text - Pamela Nottingham's Bobbin Lace Making, which looks on cursory inspection like it has reasonably clear diagrams, and will probably be my starting point.

I liked a book the library had, Doris Southard's Lessons in Bobbin Lacemaking (different from the Southard listed above), but I'll start with the books on hand.

END EDIT

ivarose (Etsy) sells PDFs of older instructional texts (I believe they've entered the public domain, so I committed a couple of those as well.

Note that I have yet to so much as UNPACK my bobbins or try this, life's been busy, but it's on my to-do list!

Re: bobbin lacemaking

[yhlee]

:Facepalm: Decided to start with Southard's Bobbin Lacemaking instead (the verbal descriptions are easier for my tired brain). Of course, before I can do anything interesting (?) I have six pairs of bobbins to wind. :p I used to wind SEWING MACHINE bobbins by hand for my mom (I was like...five years old, so I probably did a terrible job of it and she was VERY NICE about it haha), but this is already tedious enough that I looked for a quasi-affordable Lacis lace bobbin winder (~$50, eep) and ordered it. I will report back when it arrives??

The nicer (?) ones are rather pricier ($150 and up). I'm sitting here wondering if a variable speed power drill could be pressed into service, but my husband already doesn't trust me with power tools. :p (We have a power drill, do not know if it does variable speed.)

I went for a hand-cranked bobbin winder because I enjoy mechanical tools? There are electrically driven ones too, but I have a reflexive expectation of power outages.

Googling the topic suggests there are pocket lace bobbin winders. I am desperately curious, but have failed to figure out where one finds these things for sale (maybe these are all homebrew creations??) or what one would even look like!

The other pitfall here appears to be there are bobbin winders for weaving (?) and sewing bobbins, which at least to me look like they would no way no how accommodate a square lace bobbin, unless maybe one rejiggered the thing - I am no engineer and I don't have one anyway, might as well buy the right tool to begin with??

In the meantime, I have a bunch of hand-winding ahead of me, which might be a soothing thing to do while watching TV or sitting in the car as a passenger. :D

[havocthecat]

There's a knitting/crochet community that has daily posting (badly_knitted I think?) so this makes sense, there are many places for those fiber arts.

[rugessnome]

maybe you mean get_knitted? badly_knitted seems to be someone's personal (mostly) fic posting journal.

[havocthecat]

I think I did mean that! Thank you. I think it's because badly_knitted is the main poster to get_knitted - but you were 100% right. I was confused.

tatting

[yhlee]

I have not done tatting in a while; I was introduced to it by the talented lavenderbard, an expert tatter who sent me a starter kit. The "flip" is the part I had issues with at first (apparently common) until it finally "clicked." I never did much of it due to distractability and other commitments, but I want to take it up again in that it is SUPER portable. I sucked at crochet and acrimoniously divorced knitting, but a tatting shuttle + thread are things I can keep in my pocket to occupy my hands when we're out and about.

The text I own is Rozella F. Linden's Easy Tatting, but there are some good videos etc.; here's a tutorial on YouTube.

Oh - the other advantage is that tatting shuttles (the beginner Aerlit kind anyway) are relatively inexpensive, ditto crochet thread.

needle lace

[yhlee]

So I got as far as ordering a bobbin lace winder for bobbin lacemaking and then stalled out because I caught COVID-19 and could not obtain a C-clamp to hold it in place while it did its thing.

Also I'm the dumbass who discovered that the kind of lace I yearn to eventually make, Youghal lace, is needle lace, NOT bobbin lace. I still want to try bobbin lace, but after failing to understand some of the basic "of course everyone knows it" terminology in public domain texts for needle lace even though the, uh, gist of the topological operations seem super straightforward, I have acquired Jacqueline Peter's A Practical Guide to Needle Lace, which has good reviews overall. (It's translated from the French and apparently the translation has some infelicites. I would try obtaining the French version, because I do read French, but also my French sewing/fiber arts terminology is nil, so it wouldn't be helpful!) Will report back!

Re: needle lace

[yhlee]

For the curious: smol picspam of Jacqueline Peter's A Practical Guide to Needle Lace at my DW.