Hi Brian I found your comments on spangles bobbins fascinating and agree with your comments. Bucks point is my speciality and over the last 30++ years I have tried many other types of lace, pillows and bobbins. I have come to the conclusion that the bobbins and pillows evolved together and, if you use bobbins with a type of pillow they did not evolve with, they do not work as easily. Although having said that I prefer using a slightly domed pillow with spangled bobbins (and definitely not a flat pillow). However, Midlands bobbins would have been used with a bolster or square pillow (I assume you know what a square pillow is?) and the part of the pillow that is worked on is a similar shape.
I have some very old unspangled Midlands bobbins with bulbous ends, a few have single heads and a couple with thistle heads that are probably of similar age, so they may indicate the time when the heads changed. I also have a couple of this old type with staples, no one has mentioned them so far. Staples were probably easier than making holes, but are inclined to come out after a time or break . I was interested about your comment on the difficulty of making the holes, I have always wondered about it, and now I think about it I can think of one of my bobbins (one of the small old ones, but probably not as old as the ones already mentioned) that has probably had the hole made by burning - I must check when I come across it. I would be most interested in your article about all this as well as the other I have just replied to. I am using these little bobbins at the moment as I am researching the techniques that were used for making the very fine Bucks using 160/2 Egyptian cotton, I may have to go finer. Then my problem will be pins. Does anyone have any comments about the fine pins. Again, these were not easy to make in the past and very expensive. How did they get pins sufficiently fine for the very fine Bucks point, sometimes with 8 pins per cm along the footside? All best wishes Alex - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com
