When I get asked to teach I offer that students can either buy their equipment up front from the supplier of their choice (but advice given) so they can take their work home at the end of the session and carry on, or they can borrow from my teaching equipment which they leave with me at the end of the session. I've a massive library of prickings because when I started in my first lace group they recommended that I picked small pieces of lace and pricked them out so that I got to understand how patterns went together. And because they are small pieces from everywhere I often lend them to students as starter pieces so that they don't need to prick out the pattern for the first few pieces that they make. I then encourage them to do as I did and make up patterns to understand them. A few years back I was teaching a student how to make lace so for the first thing we made together, a spingett's snake (big thread, quick make, teaches whole stick and twist and sewings) I gave her a pre-pricked pricking and we sat and wound the few bobbins needed together and made up a pair of snakes. We used one of my teaching pillows and the bobbins were from my teaching set (nicely weighted but nothing to write home about) and she make the snake over 3 sessions leaving the equipment with me between sessions. So far so good. The student liked making lace so she decided that she wanted to buy her own equipment. I suggested a local lace fair and some suppliers that had good equipment but not too expensive and she went off with a small list of essentials that she needed to get going. She came back with a 26" straw pillow that neither of us could basically lift and that every pin she pushed in bent!!! And 6 bone bobbins that cost at the time £20 each. (£120 I could have bought nearly everything I would have needed for the first couple of years!!!). She had also bought big dangly glass beads 'because they were pretty'. I could see we were going to have problems<g> So I suggested that for the next session we spent part of the time spangling the bobbins that she had bought and choosing her next piece of lace to make. After about 15 minutes she threw down the bobbins and said that she was never making lace again. I asked why and she said that all this spangling and pricking and stuff meant that she wasn't making lace. I tried to calm her down by saying that many bobbin makers offered bobbins already spangled and that she could photocopy patterns and then stick them to card and cover with plastic but she still wasn't happy. When I calmed her down she finally came out with it. She liked the snake but didn't like the idea that she would have to learn to make lace. She had bought a pattern from a supplier for a lace fan using 260 pairs of bobbins (bucks point) and wanted to make that next. I felt like saying 'what with the 3 pairs that you own that aren't even spangled!!!) but I bit my tongue. Why? Because when I started to make lace I had chosen a small pattern that I wanted to make and had focused my learning on getting to a point where I could make it. When I showed my teacher the pattern and asked her what I needed to learn in order to get to the point of making this piece she told me that it was too advanced and I'd not be able to do it for years. I'd been making lace for 4 months at this time. I left the lessons, joined a lace group and 2 months later made the piece that I had chosen back at the start. So, I didn't want to say anything like that to this student. What I did say was she had to choose patterns to get herself to the biggy. Her response was that unless she made something that big then people at our living history events would be more impressed with what I was making. I suggested that she got another lace teacher. Sometimes even the best help in the world isn't enough. Mind you, she is the only student I have not succeeded with. L
Kind Regards Liz Baker [email protected] My chronicle of my bobbins can be found at my website: http://thelacebee.weebly.com/ --- On Sat, 2/4/11, David C COLLYER <[email protected]> wrote: From: David C COLLYER <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [lace] Card versus photocopy paper To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, 2 April, 2011, 12:21 > Dear Clay and other interested Friends, > > And from a teaching standpoint, I think it is essential for relatively new lacemakers to get into the habit of pre-pricking, since this helps "review" the pricking for those illusive dots that sometimes print out lighter than others and might be missed. I can tell you now that if I'd been taught to pre-prick when I first learned lace making, then I most probably would not have gone on with it, finding that process oh so boring and holding me up. Still I'm happy that I did go on with it all the same David in Ballarat - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003 - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
