My question to you is, what qualities should I look for when choosing a thread
for a bobbin lace scarf? I would like it to be soft and flowing so I am
thinking silk or a silk blend and I want the grid size to be fairly large,
maybe 8 mm between footside pins. My biggest concern is that the threads I
have been looking at do not have much of a twist. Will they fall apart as I
am working? The shop owner is very knowledgeable and dyes and spins some of
the threads that he sells. So what questions should I ask him about his
threads?
I am currently working on a silk scarf, with silk designed for knitting
and not very tightly spun. It is working out a treat!!!!!!! When you
wind your bobbins make sure it doesn't untwist the twist. Since I have
dylexia with right left issues my rule is to wind a few bobbins bobbins
with a bit of thread and work a small sample and check if it unravels or
tightens up. Someone on the list will tell us which way to wind.
I'm assuming you will be using torchon in your design. Rule of thumb:-
How long do you want the scarf to be, say 40 inches, wind footside
bobbins with 1 1/2 x 40 inches ie about 60 inches
footside passives about 45 inches (assuming no twists on these otherwise
allow more)
all others except workers 2.5 x length
workers would require a whole lot more and you will have to add extra
thread think about 10 x length of scarf, it depends on how far they have
to travel across and back.
When you buy your silk look at the length of thread not the weight.
For my scarf I bought 3 x 30 gm ball which contain 300m and another 300m
of a contrasting colour. I'm using 74 pairs of bobbins on a 0.8mm grid
and the scarf is quite wide. I have used up 2 balls of the main and half
the contrasting colour. This means I have extra thread if I need to add
to workers or miscalculated initially.
I hope this helps
Anna in a cool but sunny Sydney
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