Hi Sue et all,
Yes, I have a rectangular pillow, which was my first. I made it myself by
using a piece of plywood with the corners rounded and a blue 'duck' (sail
making canvas)bag fitted over it. It took me a whole weekend to chop straw
and remove the nodes from it. Then stuff the canvas bag on one side of the
board very tightly with the aid of a short broomstick and a mallet. My arms
were extremely sore with all that effort. The pillow holds the pins
beautifully but is VERY heavy. It is about 23 by 15 inches and goes from
about 2/3 '' on the edge to about 3.5'' in the middle
Also, at one time I left a piece of laceon it for too long and the brass
pins I'd used had were oxidised and at one with the straw (I found out later
that straw is quite acidic). That time I had to take my pins out with a pair
of pliers leaving little green dots of 'verdigris' on my lace. It was an
expensive lesson as I was unable to remove the spots from my lace and in the
end discarded it.
Now I use high density ethafoam pillows. I refuse to count my pillows or
bobbins for inventory. That is too much lace-time wasted.
Joepie, East Sussex
From Sue Babbs
Mine was a strange, straw-filled, rectangular pillow about 12 inches x 8
inches x 3 inches, which I was given by a friend before I even knew about
bobbin-lace. She came from Bedfordshire and told me this was what the pillow
was used for. It is nicely covered in blue cotton, and would be a lot more
useful if it had a circular cross-section, and could then be used as a
bolster.
Has anyone else met up with a lace pillow like this one?
I used it for the first piece of lace I made from the Readers' Digest
handbook, but then gave up trying lacemaking as the thread used was so thick
and the design so odd that I couldn't believe it was lace!!
Later another fired talked me into going to evening classes with her - and
that turned out to be to make lace.
Sue
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