I doubt any of these would work for 150+ pairs, but they do for 50-100. 1. Some people have fabric "books" that they put to each side of the pillow. They open to the last "page", lay bobbins in there, flip the next page over them and lay more bobbins in there, etc. I do not get along with these books at all. The layers are lumpy, especially with spangled bobbins or continentals that have a lot of shape, and I find it hard to keep the upper layers from jumbling up and/or falling out of the book.
2. I often use those wood strips that look like tongue depressors with elastic. Kenn makes some, as does Aebi (sp?), and several dealers carry them. They have a hole at each end for pinning them to the pillow during transport. I keep Continental (Swiss) bobbins in them when the pillow is packed. For Midlands, I secure them differently but still use the strips for making space. When I need space on the pillow, I park 3-5 strips to one side and run a longish divider pin through the pinholes at the far end of them. With a single pin, they swivel out of the way. Then I lay a row of bobbins up against the pin and swivel the lowest strip over them, and pin the near end in place. The bobbins stay neatly lined up between the pins under the strip. As I continue to work bobbins, I lay them atop the wood strip starting at the far pin. When I reach the near pin, I remove the pin, swivel the next strip to lay on top of the bobbins, and pin through both strips. I can stack the bobbins 5 layers high with 4 stips. If I had longer-pinned dividers, I could stack them higher. The advantage over the fabric books is that you have a rigid layer between each layer of bobbins. Each layer of bobbins is therefore on a flat surface, so they don't jump over each other as much. They are ready to work from without looking to see which thread goes to which bobbin. I keep a stack of strips at each side of the pillow and, as I work from one side to the other of the lace, pick up bobbins from the top layer of one stack and lay the finished bobbins onto the other stack. When I've removed all the bobbins from one layer, I unpin the wood strip and re-pin through the remaining strips. 3. For spangled bobbins, I also use a marvelous thingy I got from Lia Baumeister in one of her classes. These are chain stitched from 6-ply embroidery floss or something about that thickness. The strip of chain stitches is looped back on itself at one end. I thread the loop through one spangle and run the unlooped end through the loop. This secures the thingy to that spangle. Then I can thread neighboring spangles onto the loose end and move the whole batch as a unit. Because it's just thread, I can fold the whole batch over itself to take up less room, and I can pin through the thread to keep them out of the way but in order. When there are no other bobbins run through the thing, the thread just hangs down and doesn't get in the way. I can have several of these hanging off bobbins, and load them up as needed. Robin P. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA http://www.pittsburghlace.8m.com/ - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
