Noelene wrote:
Now I am a little more confident with leaves and tallies, I'd like to do some Beds. I have both Technique of Bobbin Lace and Bedfordshire Lace Making by Pamela Nottingham - the first names cotton threads in the Beds section, the second book says only use linen.
What is best, especially for a novice still struggling with leaves?
Having taken the Beds class from Christine Springett three times now, I can recommend the thread she always uses, which is Brok. The larger sizes are 36/3 and 50/3. It is a yummy thread to use and being a triple instead of just a double ply, it's pretty sturdy (important when you redo a leaf 14 times! - experience speaking here!) You get a nice full look to your lace and the thread does some of the work!
Since I've never taken a class from Christine Springett and am entirely self-taught, I feel free to express -- emphatically -- a totally opposing view :) Brok is cotton, and 3-ply cotton is OK (even nice) for making leaf-shaped tallies, in *some* circumstances (like modern Russian). I can't imagine using cotton in Beds (of the kind that Underwood has in her books, for example)... Beds is supposed to be a living, breathing, nature-following lace; and cotton, especially 3-ply, just won't fill the bill of requirements. I don't like to use cotton even for Cluny, which is much more "tidy" (and a preferred technique for me), or in Russian (where machine-perfection doesn't matter as much). There just *isn't* a thread "born" that matches linen in every respect; if I could get linen thread in all the same thicknesses and colours that are available in cotton and silk, I'd *never* use anything else, no matter what lace I was making...
---- Tamara P Duvall mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland
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