Here are my thoughts on wire lace making. The number one important thing is to make sure your wire doesn't get kinked. So when winding wire onto a bobbins from a spool of wire make sure it doesn't go boing on you. Once a kink gets into your wire it will weaken your wire. Sometimes it can be saved by carefully unbending the wire back to its original direction. Take your forefinger and your thumb and run them along where the kink was formed and go back and forth. This will also get the waves out of the wire if you find you have to undo your wire lacing. Just take your two fingers again and go up and down the wire to get the wavyness out. Do keep in mind that once a wire is kinked it will be weaker so when working with the wire at that point be really careful about doing too much tugging on it. Do you wind your bobbin from a spool by taking your hand and purposely wind the bobbin but to anchor the one end of your wire in the hole at the bobbin of the wire and bend the wire up the shank neck of the bobbin. roll your bobbin to wind the wire unto the bobbin. When you start to roll your bobbin..the wire will cover the wire end thereby securing the end to the bobbin. Once you get the wire yardage or inches where you want on the bobbin you then feed the wire through the eye hook that is on top of the bobbin. Take the other end of your wire and do the same thing to wind your wire onto your bobbin.
When working with wire in your lace you actually bend the worker bobbin in the direction that the bobbin will go before you actually start to weave the bobbin. I am mainly thinking of tallies in wire. After you bend the wire of the worker in the direction you are going you then come back to the right and start to weave your worker through the skeleton frame. Once you get to the left you again bend the worker wire to the right this time and then start to weave. Once a wire has been bent in what ever direction it will have a kink starting to form. You can not take a bobbin and wrap it around a wire and then tight that bobbin. I think doing tallies in wire is so much easier in wire than in thread. You can not rush making lace when using wire. You need to be fully relaxed. You can not pull on bobbins in the same way you would with thread. Wire will break and it does make a pinging sound. I heard that pinging a few times in the wire lace class I took at Ithaca this past weekend. When it comes to a time when you are thinning our your wires like when you are at the end for instance...all you have to do is bend the wire back on itself. You still need to cut the wires and you actually take the wires and sew with them to bring your ends together. I actually overlapped my ending of my braid and then took two ends from each braid and over lapped the braids and then sewed with the wire I left for sewing purposes. Once you are done with your piece you can keep all of your left over wire just by picking up all the wires you have removed off the bobbins and coiling them together in your hand. I have also taught to tatting students tatting with wire. I did this along with Mark Myers a couple of times. In tattng with wire...it is still having to be careful not to have any kinks forming. Anyhooo....I am not an expert in lacing of any kind. I am just sharing some of the things I learned in the class I took. I am going right now to put a few pictures on my blog of the wire pendant/Christmas Ornament in progress on my pillow along with a picture of it finished. I will be doing more of this lace definately. Blog address in my signature. You will also see a picture of Josee Poupart demonstrating I did have a real good time in her class and plan to make more lace in wire. Next will be the leaf maybe. You can see also in the pictures the aluminum bobbins my husband turned and made for me to use with wire in bobbin lace making. Enjoy the post! I hope some of my thinking and pictures will help. Wind To Thy Wings, Sherry celticdreamwe...@yahoo.com http://celticdreamweaver.com/ http://celticdreamweave.blogspot.com/ Nata 616 ----- Original Message ---- From: Celtic Dream Weaver <celticdreamwe...@yahoo.com> To: l...@dont.panix.com Sent: Tue, October 12, 2010 4:36:59 PM Subject: [lace] Wire lace I will write something about wire lace making (since I just took a class in it) after my grandchildren go home which will enable me to type with more than my forefinger and thumb. Hang in there. I will be back. Wind To Thy Wings, Sherry celticdreamwe...@yahoo.com http://celticdreamweaver.com/ http://celticdreamweave.blogspot.com/ Nata 616 - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com
