I am looking at starting to order my equipment and was wondering what people prefered for a pillow shape and which is considered most versatile.
Hi Janet:
Cookie:
Advantages: can make lace in any direction - useful for square edgings, doilies, etc. as well as straight edgings. Will usefully accommodate far more bobbins than the *average* roller pillow. (I say average because there are gigantic roller pillows that have far more space on them.) Also can be quite cheap - some are made out of house insulation (not the fibreglass, the boards) Even so, these are useful pillows and are very lightweight and inexpensive. There are also more expensive cookie pillows, of course, depending on how they're made and what they're made of. European cookie pillows stuffed with seagrass can run into hundreds of dollars (CDN).
Disadvantages: you will have to move up a straight edging every 4 to 6 inches. This is a tedious process, but quite do-able. There are various ways of coping with the need to move your lace in progress. A possible problem - be careful not to get too large a cookie pillow, as you can wind up having to reach quite far forward in order to make your lace, which is awkward and tiring.
Roller pillow:
Advantages: You can happily make yards and yards of an edging without having to move your lace. These pillows can be quite attractive, pretty objects, and often have little extras, like drawers in the back, or extra decorations (my own is tole-painted on the back) They are usually a more compact size than the cookie pillows.
Disadvantages: you need to make your pricking meet itself on the roller so you can just keep going around and around. This is done in several ways - the main methods are padding out the roller to exactly the right width, or making two prickings that meet and are used one after the other (I use this method). Number of pairs: generally the useful working space is a fan-shape spreading out from the edges of the roller, and this space can be quite narrow. Bobbins not being used can be placed off the back edge of the pillow. Nevertheless, I find with my French roller pillow that I cannot easily use more than about 23 pairs of bobbins, while with a good-sized cookie pillow I can easily use 40-50 pairs.
There are several other pillow shapes around the world, but these are the two main types you will find advertised.
I'm sure there are other considerations that I haven't thought of. I'm sure some other Arachnes will fill you in!
Adele North Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada)
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