Lace Days at Sweet Briar

Lace Days at Sweet Briar took place June 21-27, 2009. This was a week of bobbin lace making with lace makers from all over the county. Sweet Briar is a women's college located just north of Lynchburg, Virginia and only an hour and a half drive from home. My teacher and I were roomies and she drove. I must say we were very compatable roommates.

The first photo shows some of the goodies we received at special meals. Now there is one exception .... the bobbin. This bobbin is a commemorative one especially made for Lace Days participants by a person, in England, who specializes in commemorative bobbins. It is made of wood, hand painted and then spangled. A bit pricey as compared to other bobbins but well worth it because of the event it represents. The tassel along with a DVD of patterns were table favors at our Friday evening banquet. The tassel has been attached to my thread scissors that I use for my bobbin lace. The porcelain item next to the tassel is a cat pin cushion and I will use it on the pillow that stays at home to hold my divider pins. Oops, forgot to take a photo of the divider pins I purchased ..... well, have to save something for the next time LOL BTW I am not a cat person but this was my door prize and it is kinda cute so I'll keep her. The bottom item is a hand-knitted hedgehog .... a symbol for bobbin lacers. One of the ladies in my class made them for all the attendees. Hmmmm, need a name for "hedgie".

Since my class piece of lace is far from finished I decided to post the "goodies" I purchased. My teacher, Susan Wenzel and her husband, were vendors for the retreat and they carried supplies for knitted lace and tatted lace as well as for bobbin lace. A lace makers dream shop!

Up until this retreat my favorite lace making technique was knitted lace with tatting a very, very close second. Before the retreat was over bobbin lace was working hard to knock tatting out of second place. Did she succeed? We'll just have to wait and see LOL I did purchase three books on knitting lace shawls. Besides knitting lace in some of my socks, knitting lacy shawls is my No.1 thing.

Aha! I cannot possibly attend a bobbin lace retreat without purchasing books on the subject. Being a bobbin lacer only eight months my "library" consisted of only three books. Anyone knows that is not near enough to have a good working knowledge of any needlework subject. Besides that the books are filled with patterns. The red book in the above photo is filled with easy Christmas lace pieces and the green book in the next photo is also full of beginner pieces. Both of these books have several pieces that would be suitable to attach to my crazy quilt blocks. The Bobbin Lace Stitches book was recommended by my teacher as a "must have". She also suggested the Point Ground Patterns from Australia.

The book in the above photo came recommended by a lacer that I met online and my teacher agreed. The last one is a book of bobbin lace jewelry. Now I may not make the necklaces but the earrings look very promising for me and the projects are again small enough to use for cq.

I could not possibly come away without purchasing some of the most luscious looking threads I'd ever seen. Just wish I had unlimited funds for threads LOL Some of them were purchased with tatting in mind although they are definitely useable for bobbin lace. The tinest balls above are size 80 tatting thread. Several were on sale .... the yellow and shaded orange just below the yellow. The lilac (might appear grey) has a silver thread wrapped through it and is a Turkish thread highly tooted by tatters around the world. Just had to have a spool to try. The other two medium size spools are the new Lizbeth threads carried by Handy Hands Tatting.com. Decided to try a couple of colors for some colorful butterflies before I place an order. The three spindles and one ball are a luscious soft mint green and was packaged for the necklace taught by Susan. Fell in love with the color but know I won't use the thread for the necklace.

Can you guess a couple of my favorite colors are in the teal and purple families????? These colors will be used to make special lace bookmarks for my granddaughters and daughters-in-law as they are all avid readers. They may not all get made this year but I will work on those until all five have a bobbin lace bookmark made just for them. The three spindles and ball in the lower right corner are shades of autumn ... another of my favorite color groups.

In my last post I shared a "challenge" stitch from Lesa, of CQForNewbies, Heavy Chain Stitch. The second part of the "challenge" was to add a favorite embroidery stitch. This past week I added Herringbone on both sides, using size 8 brown perle cotton. The chain stitch itself is worked in size 5 perle cotton. I don't think there is a third part to the challenge but I've already decided what I want to add to this stitch and eventually planning to use it as a seam treatment for a cq square in the future. Next time, if my idea works, I'll present this stitch horizontal instead of verticle.

Before I forget (again) here is the fabric part of the hugemongous squishy I won on the first ever quiz presented on SAM (Stitch Angels Mentors) a Yahoo group I recently joined. All the other goodies included may be seen in my previous post.

Well, that's all for today. See you next time and may all your stitching be blessed.