Welcome To My Dumpster Dive

My lace themed side blog, main is Aita-the-isu. Expect some forays into 18th century fashion and such.

[flimberjurbles]

I still do bobbin lace btw. Just not very often or for very long. I put in 2 hours today which due to my skills being rusty was only another spider and a bit of footside. I finally ran out of pins, so I'm pulling some from the center where everything's already secured.

[midnightsmenagerie]

I’ve been working on a pattern from the Ipswitch Lace book by Karen Thompson and it’s going MUCH better than expected!

There’s a few issues and I wish I’d chosen a heavier gimp thread but it’s awesome.

I started trying bobbin lace for the shot at creating a more historically accurate lace for costuming. I’m actually doing it now!

So proud of myself here 💛.

[beif-weaves]

Doing something fun and easy as a break from my other project :> this is from a single color changing yarn so I didnt have to make any color choices and just turn my brain off and weave

[midnightsmenagerie]

This pattern is more fun than I expected! Really enjoying how the flowers turned out!

Pattern here!

[midnightsmenagerie]

I am loving the improvements to completing the tassels on these! So satisfying

[midnightsmenagerie]

Hello Torchon, old friend

[midnightsmenagerie]

So it’s got some problems but made it through a practice strip of the 2nd pattern in the Chantilly Lace DVD set.

[fragrantblossoms]

Application of bobbin lace in the shape of a butterfly, c. 1900 - c. 1914. Lacemaker: anonymous, Europe.

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl

[theunusualchameleon]

Bobbin lace Tumblr, can I have a hand with something? I've gotten good advice from y'all before.

What does this pattern mean with the little "8" in the split dot?

The other numbers in circles show me where to hang bobbins when starting a project, but I've never seen this bit with the 8 before. Am I supposed to put four bobbins on each of the pins indicated? Drape something between them and spread all eight along it? Please help.

[sparklingspangles]

It is adding the bobbins for the trail. You hang the 8 pairs on support pins above the line, I would probably have 4pins with passives, and hang the worker on the outside edge. They should be hung in pairs not open. Work through the pairs to the inside, add a pin and remove the support pin for the worker. Once you have worked a few pins in the trail, remove the rest of the pins and tension the pairs so that the loops are gone and the top of the trail lies flat.

Hope this makes sense, good luck

[applesforhela]

Back at trying bobbin lace. I have a couple foam circles (seat cushion bases) to use as my working surface, and I'm happy with them. Before this I was using a couple different pillows that were too soft or too fuzzy or too curvy or whatever. This is sturdy and flat. So need to give it a fabric cover, but I wanted to get started, so we'll worry about that later.

I'm set up to do the "Rose Bed" pattern from Jo Edkin's website which looks like this:

A zigzag of rose ground with cloth stitch fans. I have the pattern mashed out and the hike pricked. I've done the first half-fan at the start and the first couple roses.

But then it was time to work the first half of the fan on the right. Now this pattern has a ground line of Torchon between the roses, and I made a line of Torchon on the outer edge of the roses too without thinking about it. But that was the worker pair for the fan that I led down the edge of the roses, so I need to work it all the way back if I want to continue the pattern as intended.

But I also really like doing the roses and want more of them in the pattern. Soooo...

What if I just add some extra roses in there? Now I'm trying to figure out how to get the pink pairs lined up to make that work. I think I need to work the one green pair back anyways since it's supposed to be the worker on the right side, and that should hopefully solve it.

Will try it out tomorrow. For now, it's bedtime.

[yeoldecryptid]

Which one are you?

I regularly break my crochet hooks and knitting needles

What kind of fiber arts are y’all doing for that to happen???

I don’t knit or crochet button.

Voting ended onJul 5, 2025

[ineffectualdemon]

Knitting! Nope gotta untangle string first

Crochet! After I untangle some string

Weaving - untangle lots of string

Cross stitch - hold up, string is tangled and I am full of rage

Sewing: string tangled into tiny knots of hatred

[subtextsays]

Handspinning: imma put so much tangle potential into this string i'm making

[visionofthebees]

Two roses- one for the lace conference in Bulgaria and one for me to see what the finished project is actually supposed to look like!

[perikrone]

The depth of the global textile supply chain that you get into as you get into increasingly obscure fiber arts is so wild.

You can start with knitting, or crochet, and there are *so* many choices for yarn and materials. Indie dyers with unique colorways, weird fibers from heritage breeds, and patterns for hundreds of lifetimes worth of hobby. You can even dive into spinning! Buy weird fiber from hobbyists and conservationists around the world, and spin things that you can't easily get otherwise.. Just those skills are enough to take a lifetime to hone.

But if you go far enough down the rabbit-hole, you're suddenly googling for how to compare thread weights between crochet thread numbers and weaving numbers, and is flax graded differently than cotton? Oh, I can get 20/2 and 60/2 silk all day long, but suddenly if I need 30/2 silk there are just a handful of results and wow I'll never be able to buy this again, is this a random mill in Turkey just selling cone ends??? And before you know it you have a note file with 10,000 Etsy links and Google translated half functioning corporate websites and you're trying to figure out if it's worth it to just see if you can import from this tiny store in Germany that seems to have a reliable source of *close enough* fiber for what you're going for, and why are you even so into *tablet weaving* of all things, why can't we just be knitting endless socks or something like that???

Love it, wouldn't trade it for the world.

[iplaywithstring]

Threads for bobbin lace are the worst for trying to find equivalents, because a lot of patterns/resources will list European brands, which may be hard to come by in Canada, but there's not really any info aside from [Brand] [number] but even the numbers aren't consistent across brands.

Sometimes you can find wraps per cm, and there's one magic chart that will give the wpc for various common threads and the common grid size, but even that is dated and only has so many threads, so it's use is limited.

[midnightsmenagerie]

Adding to this, each type of fiber has a completely different numbering system. And comparison charts are not easy to come by. Wtf even is 2/20 silk compared to say Lizbeth 80 (cotton)? Buy it and find out!

Standardization, in this economy?

Also, there’s 1 shop I know of (the legendary Holly VanScriver) that sells any of the super fine lace threads and supplies. Idk where/how to source these things either so if we ever lose her shop it’ll be absolute fiber anarchy in the US.

[iplaywithstring]

That feeling when you've been putting off working on lace because you know you should change a pair of bobbins and you finally decide to do it and realize past you already got a paor ready

I've done one full turn of the bolster. This lace is for the leg hems for my daughter's split drawers that go with her 1850s prom dress. Because if you're going that far why not go all the way

Simple fan and torchon ground worked with 8/2 weaving cotton because that's what I have on hand. I'm about halfway done, with a goal of working on it at least once a week.

[midnightsmenagerie]

I woke up and chose violence starting this on a weeknight. The DVD is absolutely excellent though, do recommend.

[soggyspottytowel]

And here are the rest of them! (36 in total)

These are my favorites