For interest's sake, I've just dug out my guide handbook from 1968, and
found the badge requirements:
LACE-MAKER (Lace)
1 Name and describe four different kinds of lace, e.g. torchon, Irish
crochet, Brussels point, filet, ground point, Carrickmacross, Milanese, etc.
2 Mend, very neatly, a piece of real or imitation lace.
3 Pass one of the following clauses:
(a) Bobbin or pillow lace: Manage at least thirty-six bobbins; make five
different stitches; show specimens to include insertion and edging.
(b) Needlepoint lace: Make eight varieties of stitch, to include bars,
picots, tulle.
(c) Filet or darned net lace: Make your own net and vary the design. Show
insertion or several squares.
(d) Tambour lace: Know the tambour stitch. Work in several colours; or show
a piece of 'needle run' with at least eight varieties of stitch in the net.
(e) Applique on net: e.g. Carrickmacross, applique duchesse, etc. Show a
piece
of work including lawn or sprigs. 4 Pass one of the following clauses:
(a) Tatting lace: Know single- and double-thread tatting, both for insertion
and lace, manage three threads at a time on separate shuttles.
(b) Knitted lace: Copy a simple design, or follow directions, showing edging
and insertion.
(c) Crochet: Copy a simple design, or follow directions, showing insertion,
edging, comer, and Irish rosettes.
(d) Netting lace: Work two doilies with varying widths of mesh and different
designs, such as shell or pointed edges.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Helen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lace" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Lace" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [lace] Girl Guides and lace
Okay, let's see how well my brain works right now :o) Please delete this
email if the combined history of lace and Guides in the UK doesn't
interest you at all.
I think that the lacemaker badge went out in the mid-80s. I went up to
Guides in the winter of 91-92 - just as all of the major changes had
happened (Jeff Banks' uniforms with culottes & baseball caps and the
square-ish handbooks in full colour). I think this might have been the
last time that lacemaking was mentioned in the Craft badge. I know that
the lacemaker badge wasn't in the previous badgebook as my Brown Owl gave
me a copy when I left Brownies (trying to get rid of useless stock, I
suspect!) and I would have noticed such a thing and probably tried to work
for it. There were changes that had filtered down to unit level by around
95-early 96 (I was too scared to go to Rangers when I should have - that's
why the dates don't quite work) as I remember that a lot of badges,
including Interpreter, had suddenly been changed to staged badges to allow
more girls to work on something that interested them but that they might
not have been able to complete and to stretch the girls who'd already been
doing something for many years.
There is still a Craft badge, but the syllabus has been changed somewhat.
It hasn't been "dumbed down", just that the clauses have been made less
explicit so that it's up to the Guider's/tester's discretion as to whether
a girl has done *her* best to complete the clause. Currently, my Guide
unit tends to work for Go For Its (a modern equivalent of the Patrol
Pennants or whatever they were) - if anyone's just been thinking that a
girl they teach won't be able to make lace for the Craft badge, then no,
that's not what I meant :o) As long as she's put the effort into the
work, whatever it is, and completed the necessary clauses then the badge
should be awarded, whatever it's for!
A few years ago when I was at a training, "Ideas for the Older Brownie",
the trainer did suggest that more complicated, "grown-up" grafts might be
a way to keep a girls interest until she could go on to Guides. One of
the crafts suggested was bobbin lace. Yes, I know for a fact that you can
make lace that young, but my only reservation was "how on Earth am I
supposed to start a girl off on a piece of lace whilst keeping the rest of
the pack interested in whatever they're supposed to be doing?!?"
I did try to get one of my Guides interested in lace. She's very good at
beading, sewing and making friendship bracelets (and those are just what I
know of) so I took the bracelet I made from the last Lace Guild Young
Lacemakers pattern under the pretence that I couldn't remember how to tie
bracelets up. It was pretty, but not something she was into.
Overall, I think that Guiding is probably the only chance that a lot of
girls get to do crafty things now and our programme has changed to account
for this. A big change from when making and selling Torchon was suggested
as being a good way for a girl to make some money! :o)
Anyway, that email wasn't supposed to get so long.
Helen
At 23:55 19/06/2005, Jane Partridge wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Carol Adkinson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Hi Helen and Spiders,
>
>I used to be a Guide Captain, running a very successful group of girls
>in
>Hertfordshire but, just before I finshed, the Bobbin Lace proficiency
>badge
>was discontinued.
Rooting through some things a week or so ago, I remembered someone
saying something about this recently, and the date given for the badge's
decline was definitely within the time that I was a Guide Guider.
(1974-1994) However, although I'm sure somewhere I have a copy of the
old Guide handbook (when the badges were included in it) I can't put my
hand on it at the moment. From the 1988 version, through to the one that
was current when I left guiding in 1994, the only mention of lace was
the clause in the Craft Badge - "make a piece of lace". I gather that
there have been major changes since 1994, and I'm not sure if guides
still do badges - if so, and if the Craft Badge still exists, do we have
a current Guider in the UK who can tell us whether the clause is still
there?
As for how I got into lacemaking in the first place - it was an option
given on a (Staffordshire) County Guiders' Training Day - at the Edward
Orme School in Newcastle-under-Lyme - in March, 1984 - I got home full
of enthusiasm, "can I have a pillow for my birthday?". DH bought me the
pillow (rectangular, straw, with my current project on at the moment!)
but within a month or so I couldn't use it - our eldest daughter was
born that October. It was then five years before I saw a "lacemaking for
beginners" class at the local college, with a crèche able to take my
(then) two year old younger daughter (at 18 months she was jealous of
her big sister being able to go to playgroup - they had to be 3 for
that) and the rest, as they say, is history. I went into lace with the
aim of having something new to pass on to guides - I never dreamt at the
time that I would eventually be teaching adults!
--
Jane Partridge
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Helen in Somerset, UK
"Forget the formulae, let's make lace"
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