Hi Debra - I have not flown with a pillow yet... That's a challenge I won't mind putting off for a while!! But I have traveled with other lacemakers, where our combined luggage barely fit into the trunk of our car.
One of the first things that happened when I started making lace was that all sorts of things were suddenly analyzed to determine how they might make my lacemaking easier, more comfortable, better organized, etc. And one of my early "finds" was a pair of foam packing pieces that had probably been part of the packaging for something like a computer. The foam isn't suitable for lacemaking... it's too soft - more like the spongy stuff we ordinarily associate with the word "foam". But it suits me perfectly! It is about 6 X 12 inches and about 2 inches thick. There is a rectangle cut out of the middle, so that it really becomes a frame. When I'm traveling with work in progress, I put this foam "frame" around the pins on the pillow after I have secured everything but before I pin the cover cloth down. The foam helps keep other things from squashing the pins. It has worked very nicely for me. You could easily go to an unholsterer's and beg a scrap of foam and get him to cut it for you. If you're working with something other than straight lace, you could get the opening cut accordingly. If your opening has to be more than a couple of inches across, I think I'd also take a few spare "plugs" of the foam to fit into the opening and help provide additional protection. An alternate option is that my DH brought me a discarded case designed to hold and protect delicate electronic instruments (he rescued two, actually... Tamara got the second one!) which is lined with foam. It won't hold a 20" pillow, but it might hold 18", and certainly a 16". I'm hanging on to this in the event that I want to travel some distance and need to check a bag containing my pillow. This would certainly provide the protection it needed, provided I add additional padding to hold things in place. And in the event that I would want to have a bigger pillow, I think I'd splurge and purchase an inexpensive 20" cookie, and then cut it in two places so that it folded like a gate-leg table. (I'd avoid a center cut, because I don't like working across the cut). If the pillow had two cuts, and I made a backboard with a center fold, the two could be assembled and held together by a drawstring pillow cover - and the two parts would combine to be sturdy when assembled. Even with work in progress, the backboard could be removed and folded, the pillow would be folded under itself (with work still in progress in the center) and it could be safely packed away. Clay Clay Blackwell Lynchburg, VA USA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Debra Hilton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:55 AM Subject: [lace] Travelling with Pillows > Hi > > Has anyone travelled with their lace pillow as hand luggage recently (flown, > that is)? Any problems with the pins? > > Thanks, > > Debra (in Mozambique) but flying to Australia next week. > > - > To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: > unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
