On May 4, 2008, at 11:36, Clive & Betty Rice wrote:
Tamara is a perfect example of the freedon one learns when self-taught. In taking "formal" well-planned classes, as I did, in learning bobbin lace, I have always restricted myself to the tried and true. It's probably not the fault of the formally planned classes, it's me.
There are pluses and minuses to both. Because I was self-taught, I didn't realize that there were things it was impossible to do, so tried and tried, until I did them. That's a plus. When you solve problems for yourself, the solutions are more likely to stay with you than those learnt from others. OTOH, I have, probably, reinvented more wheels than anyone who has had formal training (ie a teacher). That's the minus of independent, hit-and-miss style of work -- you waste a lot of time.
For example, I took a fabric painting class many years ago and failed miserably in painting a mouse on a skirt for my daughter. The problem? I couldn't get the whiskers evenly matched!
I wouldn't have the nerve to put a brush to fabric; my drawing skills are so bad, that I use an inch of eraser to every half inch of pencil lead :) Trying to match whiskers on a mouse would have been an impossibility even with pencil. I think, probably, I'd have said she lost a bit of one whisker when she snatched the cheese from the mousetrap :)
As for my work in Rosalibre... I love that lace because of its potential (though it also has some limitations which drive me nuts) but I'd never have had the brains to have come up with the original -- and, IMO, revolutionary -- idea itself. All I've done is push that idea a bit more, once it was there. And I think others will be able to do it too, just as Robin and Jeanette had done (I didn't have a photo, but Jeanette had used Rosalibre's smaller rose as a fish's eye in a project. Now *that* was a brilliant, out of the box thinking).
I posted the gallery partly to answer Sue's question but mostly to encourage *everyone* to expand on Cathy Belleville's original ideas. It is, afterall, the only lace (so far, anyway) which had been invented, "from scratch", in the 21st century. It is still fluid as to the "rules" and "traditions"; it's not yet reached the point where anyone is going to scold you for doing something "wrong"...
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
