Yes, Devon, I am young enough (old enough? :-) ) to remember pre-blue film days. I still have some of my early prickings that were done on blue cardboard (maybe it's the glazed kind that someone - Mary Carey maybe? - referred to a couple of days ago). One side of the card has a 'matte' finish and the other side has a smoother, glossier finish. A pattern was traced with 'tracing' paper (think like baking parchment, but a little lighter in weight), laid over the card, wrapping the edges and held with paper clips or bulldog clips, and then one went to work with the pricker, and pricked each pinhole, followed by hand marking the lines with an indelible fine tip marker.
And that's how I learnt my lacemaking from Mum, in late 1976, as she retaught herself from Margaret Hamer's little books and Miss Channer's PG book. She then found classes locally taught by the wonderful Margaret Cardinaletti, and the rest is history. Seems like I started to use the copier onto cardstock in the late 1980's. The research facility had it's own print shop, and they were very kind to give me offcuts of cardstock from report covers, and I also saved covers from library bibliography lists that came in and were about to be discarded, once we'd used them. I still have a few A4 sheets left in various colours and good weight for pricking card. I've found that the blue film is nice to use if I'm using a white thread, but I'm deciding that since it's so hard to find now, I'm just going to go for coloured cardstock, and use clear film on the pricking if it's one that the cardstock is a little on the light side, or one that's going to get used a lot (say, yardage). There are times where the film can be of benefit - if the ink from the copier hasn't bonded correctly, it can smudge, and it would be a disaster to smudge onto one's threads. I have had some cases where the ink hasn't totally bonded to the paper and I've discovered that in advance (thankfully). A rare case, but it can happen. (and if you get photocopier ink on yourself - it's a powder - use cold water to remove, as the heat bonds it). Cheers, Helen in frosty Duvall, WA, where it's about 31F, but the sun is shining, and we had a glorious sunrise with the moon still high in the sky earlier this morning. - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
