For about the last century, most people have been making lace as a hobby
rather than to earn a living, and have had some choice as to what lace
to start with - some, because frequently that choice is dictated by the
teacher to start with. Some teachers throw their hands up in horror if
you even suggest starting with something other than braid lace or
Torchon - probably because they are not used to teaching the beginner
skills to progress to anything else. Go back beyond that, though, and
even at four or five years of age you would have been learning the lace
of the town/region in which you lived. In some places, like Honiton, and
I suspect on the continent, that is still the case, but children would
have started off learning the more complex laces - they would probably
never have learned anything else!
Some teachers like to make people think lace is difficult to learn in
order to keep them coming to class, and not let them even think they
could learn from books, DVDs or U-tube on their own. The first stage of
learning to make lace is learning the self-confidence that tells you you
can do it; after that, getting your hands to work the cross and twist
movements, then to stop thinking about what you are doing and let your
hands get on with the task - those are the difficult bits. Once that has
clicked, then other than certain advanced techniques, the lace itself
isn't all that complicated!
In message <893662BF2DDA426AB8F380939BCD0A61@Cecily>, Lyn Bailey
<[email protected]> writes
While it is possible, I know of no one who started in Binche.
--
Jane Partridge
-
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/
