Sue Babbs mentioned looking at stiffening methods for City & Guilds -
I'm not sure when Sue did her C&G, but I started mine in 1994 and it was
still part of the syllabus then. I think the samples I did were around
1995/6, and it has been interesting watching them over the years to see
what changes take place... in fact, the only change I've seen has been
with a product made by Woolworths under their Winfield brand name to be
used as a blind spray (window blinds). This has caused the sample of
cotton lace to go black (? a type of mould) on one edge.
We used samples of both cotton and synthetic fibres for each of the
stiffeners, and also left one pair of samples with no stiffening at all
as "control" pieces. We used the blind spray mentioned, spray starch,
potato starch (ie water from boiled potatoes), two strengths of sugar
solution, hairspray, rice starch and dilute PVA. The samples were then
mounted onto a sheet of paper and labelled as to what they were
stiffened with.
Over the years, I have used it to refer to when deciding how stiff I
want something and which stiffener to use.
A couple of years ago when I took my class to Pendrell Hall on a weekend
course we did the stiffening exercise as a diversion from the
concentrated lacemaking on the Saturday afternoon - the only change I
made (other than to the PVA solution - see below) was to tell them to
write the date on their sheets of paper - one thing we didn't do when we
were doing C&G!
When I made my Rainbow Choker for Myth or Mystery, my first attempt at
stiffening it was using dilute PVA - this filled in all of the holes in
the lace and the piece very nearly ended up in the bin! Fortunately it
washed out, and I used sugar solution which worked - gave the amount of
stiffening I wanted, and didn't form a film between the stitches. You
can imagine my surprise when the piece won a Medal of Excellence! It
also held its shape whilst hung by one end in the exhibition at Coventry
for three months.
I then learnt from a friend who is also into trains - he builds models -
that the PVA solution needs a drop of detergent (washing up liquid) to
break the surface tension - once that is done, it does not fill in the
holes... we proved this in the samples we did during our Pendrell
weekend.
The sampler of stiffeners is one thing I would recommend all lacemakers
do - it gives a range of different methods, (use everything you can
think of) and you have a handy reference on how the various stiffeners
affect lace in your local climate - something we can't tell you! We used
machine made cotton and synthetic lace rather than hand made, but it
could be a useful way to make use of the samples made (if you make them)
before commencing various projects.
--
Jane Partridge
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