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There’s a saying we’ve all heard a hundred times, often scribbled on primary school walls or murmured during childhood piano lessons: practice makes perfect.

Yet in the lace world, that phrase carries a gentler truth. Not perfection. Just progress. Not magic. Just muscle memory slowly catching up with the mind.

Lacemaking doesn’t come with shortcuts. No one picks up a bobbin and instinctively understands a Flanders ground or a half stitch trail. Some people, it’s true, see the structure behind a pattern as if it’s always been there. Others learn by doing, loop by loop. But in all cases, the path forward is the same: repetition, mistakes, more repetition, and eventually that quiet, thrilling moment when it flows.

And yet, in the lace world, this is where the beauty begins.

Sometimes, new lacemakers feel disheartened. They see a delicate Bedfordshire motif and think they’ll never reach that level. But no one wakes up knowing where to place a gimp or how to tension a plait. We learn by doing. Using the skill to develop the skill. There’s no shame in slow progress. It is the only kind.
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When we teach, we must remind others (and ourselves) that those who appear to grasp it quickly still need to put in the time. And those who struggle at first often develop deeper resilience. The journey shapes the lace.

So next time your threads tangle or your pattern shifts, pause. Remember you’re not behind. You’re becoming.

There are no instant lacemakers. Just patient ones.

For Mental Health Awareness Week
As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close, the truth is that the conversations it opens up need to keep going. Struggles don’t check a calendar. They don’t pack up neatly when the campaign ends or quietly wait their turn. If you've found yourself staring at your lace pillow, yarn basket or sewing machine with a numb kind of disinterest lately, you're not alone.

Losing your craft mojo can feel unsettling, especially when creativity has always been your safe harbour. It’s tempting to panic, to feel as though something precious has been misplaced for good. But that feeling doesn’t mean your love for your craft has gone. It simply means your mind and body might be asking for something else right now. And that is perfectly all right.
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In my very first podcast I talked how crafting for mental health is so very important. I've know days, even months where it has been so hard to pick up a bobbin, let alone make a piece.  I have felt guilt at not being in the right place to create. Craft, like any creative pursuit, ebbs and flows. And so does mental health.

Back in 1999, I was so ill that I put my bobbins down and didn't pick them up for nearly 2 years.  

During that time Pam Nottingham became my friend.  Not in real life, but through her books. I was so shattered that I couldn't get out of bed some days, even to go to my local lace group.

So, Pam was the person that I fell asleep reading and the one that I turned to when I was in my darkest places.  As I walked alongside the metaphorical 'black dog' I would bring Pam with me. 

When I finally was at a point to start to think about making anything, a cake, a stitch, wind a bobbin, it was her and Briget Cook who helped me get my lace mojo back.  I turned to Pam's seminal book on Bucks Point and used Bridget's Practical skills in bobbin lace to help me with the techniques and made my mum a small piece of lace for her doll's house.

This year's Mental Health Awareness week is focus on community.  Being married to a someone who enjoys the fact that he can do his own thing but know I'm 'around creating stuff' in the house is a blessing.  But more of a blessing is how he pushes me out of the door every friday just before 7pm so that I go to a friend's house to knit, crochet or wind my bobbins.

We moved to our new house on Maundy Thursday, 2022.  I cannot express how wonderful it was to move.  I associated the other house with so many bad memories and as I work from home, it has become my refuge with it's warm and bright spots in my office and our large kitchen.

My lace and craft books surround me in mine and hubby's offices here and we have bobbins on display in our sitting room to remind me that I create.  Hubby has even got me large wicker baskets to keep my current yarn projects in and there are lace pillows scattered through the house on stands.

This has been done to keep me in the midst of my craft rather than to hide it away when I have hard times, mentally.

And, if it comes to a Friday and I am burnt out from the week, then my friends expect me to come along and just sit there with a cuppa and a biscuit and enjoy the chat. 

During lockdown, I missed this type of interaction so I set up an online yarn group that met weekly for 2 hours.  It was a lifeline to us all.  This is the community that is important.

So, if you're currently adrift then here are a few thoughts:
1. Be gentle with yourself
​Try not to see the absence of craft as failure. Step away if you need to. Let yourself rest. Rest is not laziness, and silence in your hands is not a loss of identity. It’s simply a pause.

2. Keep an eye on your wellbeing
​It can help to check in with your general health. Are you sleeping? Eating? Speaking kindly to yourself? The Mental Health Foundation has some gentle resources that speak to these things, all framed around this year’s theme of Movement: Moving More for Our Mental Health. You can find their support and tips here: Mental Health Awareness Week.
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3. Stay lightly tethered to your craft world
​Even if you're not actively making, stay close to your creative circle. That might mean popping into a craft group for a cuppa and a chat, or simply scrolling through lace patterns without any pressure to start something. Connection keeps the light on.
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4. Give yourself permission to play
​If your main craft feels like too much, try something smaller. Colouring in. Finger knitting. A tiny cardboard loom. A paper snowflake. Craft doesn't need to be polished or purposeful. It can just be for now.
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If this week has sparked something in you, don’t let the end of the campaign silence that spark. Download the tips pdf.

​Keep talking. Keep noticing. And when you’re ready, your craft will still be waiting for you.

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There’s something quiet but deeply stirring about the sound of bobbins clicking gently on a pillow, the soft rhythm of threads crossing and twisting as fingers work in harmony with patterns passed down through generations. It’s a sound I’ve come to associate not only with creativity and tradition, but with resilience and a sense of place. Yet this gentle art is now officially at risk.

Recently, bobbin lacemaking was added to the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts in the UK.

​Lacemaking is no extinct, thankfully, but endangered – teetering on the edge. This means there are still enough people practising and passing it on, but not enough to be confident it will survive the next few decades without deliberate support.  Action is needed.

There are many causes for a craft to enter the endangered lists.  Shrinking market, move to manufacture outside of the UK, an aging workforce or a decline in the number of practitioners.

People still play cricket worldwide but the manufacture of hand stitched cricket balls is now extinct in the UK.  This is because of the rise in machine made cricket balls and non UK manufacture.

Fan making has been wobbling on the critically endangered part of the list for many years and it is has remained out of extinction partly due to lacemakers.  In the UK as well as Spain there is a tradion of lacemakers wanting to create a bobbin lace fan leaf and if you have a fan leaf, you need fan sticks.

However, lacemaking has started to face that those who began making lace in the great revival of the 1970s and 80s are now declining in number with no resurgence in the craft, we see lacemaking entering the list and that will affect fan making.

Bobbin lace is more than an historic curiosity or a nostalgic nod to the past. It is a living craft. One that has shaped communities, sustained livelihoods and created exquisite heirlooms from thread and time. In towns like Honiton and Bedford, and in smaller, less sung corners like Irthlingborough, lace was stitched into everyday life. It was work and pride and artistry.
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Bobbin lace is more than an historic curiosity or a nostalgic nod to the past. It is a living craft. One that has shaped communities, sustained livelihoods and created exquisite heirlooms from thread and time. In towns like Honiton and Bedford, and in smaller, less sung corners like Irthlingborough, lace was stitched into everyday life. It was work and pride and artistry.​

The potential loss of lacemaking is not new.  The 1800s saw a trying time for lacemakers, from the Devon lacemakers who petitioned Queen Victoria begging for her patronage to purchase their lace and prevent them from poverty, the the rise of the Luton Hat Industry pushing out other crafts in the East Midlands to the rise of Nottingham machine made lace, hand made lace has had it's ups and downs.

But today, we face a slow unravelling.

One of the greatest threats to its survival is something familiar to many heritage skills – a lack of visibility. In a world captivated by fast and flashy, the slow meditative nature of lace can be overlooked. Fewer people see it being made. Fewer still understand how complex and calming it can be. Even among craft circles, bobbin lace can seem impenetrable unless there’s someone patient and kind enough to guide new fingers through the first tentative stitches.
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Adult education once played a powerful role in this. It is four years since I wrote about this in The Lace Notes, and the situation has not improved.  The revival of lacemaking in the 1970s and 80s with it being added to the Adult Education syllabus caused a new generation to embrace the craft.
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Evening classes and local workshops were places where lacemaking quietly flourished. It was never just about technique. It was about community. About women (and occasionally men) gathering after work, sharing stories over lace pillows, helping each other finish tricky corners or repair broken threads. Those classes were lifelines for so many reasons. And now, they’ve largely vanished.

​Funding cuts, lack of space, an undervaluing of ‘non-vocational’ skills – they’ve all played a part in the decline of adult learning.  the final nail in the coffin of Adult Education Classes to learn lacemaking was the requirement in the mid 1990s that all tutors had to have formal teaching qualifications, often to be gained at the financial cost of the tutor and that all lessons had to have strict lesson plans.  Anyone who has tried to learn a craft knows that no one student learns at the same rate as another.  Two people joining a class will be a vastly different points within a few months so one lesson plan does not fit all.

All of this, in turn, leaves fewer avenues for passing lace skills to newcomers. The wonderful exceptions – dedicated lace teachers, committed guilds, enthusiastic local groups – are holding the threads together, but they need support.

It has been many years since the schools of Olney taught lacemaking in the classroom.

I accept that the focus for government funding for adult education has to be towards skills that enhance people's work prospects, especially for the longterm unemployed or returners to the job market.  I also accept that taking up a new craft such as lacemaking is not a cheap experience.

If you want to try to learn to knit, then a pair of needles and a ball of wool will set you back about the cost of a coffee.  Want to take up lacemaking?  Then that is going to cost you far, far more because you need a pillow and bobbins.  

Because, over COVID I received a large number of donations of equipment from the estates of lacemakers who had passed, I have been able to give new students complete sets of equipment to start.  Even before then, if someone wanted to try lacemaking, I would lend them the equipment for their first lessons then if they wanted to continue, I'd set them up with free plastic bobbins and try to source a reasonably priced first second hand pillow.

When I've taught, I've tried to keep the cost of a session down as low as possible.  Effectively I would cover the cost of my extra teaching insurance and nothing else.  Since we moved house, I don't have the space to teach at home and I've struggled to find a venue that it a reasonable cost.

As I work, I would be looking for running classes in the evening or at a weekend and I have found that many potential students have the same issues with availability as me, they can't attend a weekday class.

This means that to make learning accessible, we are looking at needing cost effective locations and access to equipment.  And that is before trying to source teachers because many people are wary of trying to share their knowledge.

There is also the quiet problem of ageing. Many of the most skilled lacemakers in the UK are now in their seventies or eighties. Their experience is extraordinary, but time is not on our side. with apprenticeships completely off the table, if younger learners don't step in, knowledge slips away with every lost teacher.
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Lacemaking is not financially viable as a business venture, it sits in the 'hobbies' section of crafts, relegated there because no one is willing to pay the true cost of a living wage for a piece of lace.  What hand made lace you find on the market is often from China or India and the cost to the customer does not reflect the true investment of time into the making.

Add to this that the market for handmade lace has also dwindled. Industrialisation changed things long ago, but even now, when handmade should hold premium value, the true worth of bobbin lace is often misunderstood. Its price rarely reflects the hours or expertise required.
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​We have to accept that for lacemaking to survive it has to be within the 'amateur' or hobby sector.

Now I say this with inverted commas around it as there are many lacemakers out there who produce professional level bobbin lace.  However as they do not receive payment for their work, it can not be placed in the proffessional sector.

I prefer to use the term artisan for anyone who makes lace.  I've talked before about how my sister introduced me to someone as 'a lacemaker' rather than someone who makes lace.  We have to embrace that term.  We are lacemakers.

One of the clear warnings that the Heritage Crafts Association make is over the shrinking base of crafts people, those with limited training opportunities or crafts where there is no mechanism to pass on the skills and knowledge.
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We can start by speaking about lace more often.
​Show it. Share it. Wear it.  Join the local talks circuit and get out there and talk about your lacemaking.  Become a WI speaker, local lunch club ... anything just get out there and talk.

Don't forget about International Lace Day.  Go and make lace in public.

Support local lace groups.
Help them thrive. And if there isn’t one nearby, consider starting your own, even a small group can offer encouragement, companionship and continuity. These gatherings are often where the magic happens: new lacemakers inspired, older hands supported and experience stitched into memory.

We also need to champion funding for adult learning. 
​Education is not a luxury, but as a vital part of community life. Bring back the spaces where people can try lace for the first time without having to travel miles or buy costly equipment up front. Let curiosity be enough to open the door.

The red list doesn’t mean it’s over. The patient isn't dead, just waving. 

It means we still have time. Bobbin lace may be endangered, but it is not gone.

​And like any good piece of lace, its strength lies in the connections between each part – between teacher and student, between generations, between memory and practice.
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Let’s keep thowing the bobbins.

Don't have time to read the blog?  Then why not listen to it on my podcast?
​Don't miss an episode - subscribe here

In a recent post on Lace Bobbins - Find the Maker, I posted about having chosen to work with wooden bobbins on a short piece.  

This then raised the question as to what other materials bobbins can be made from.

​If the designs on your bobbins tell the story of your life through commemorating events or places you have been, then what they are made of tell the story of how you create lace.

The images that I've used below are from my own collection of modern and vintage bobins. 

​These are predominately East Midlands but bobbins come in as many styles as there countries that make lace.  The type of material will vary from country to country for traditional bobbins but with the advent of global commerce, there has been greater acces materials worldwide so traditional materials are less confined to particular countries

​If you would like to know more about styles of bobbins then do go to my bobbin page.

Material Types​

Ivory bobbins are very rare and in the UK were predominately made by Barry Adams.

​If you own an ivory bobbin then please be aware that the selling or trading in Ivory is covered by CITES, worldwide and in the UK by the 2018 Ivory Act.  Failure to adhere to the act can result in a maximum fine of £250,000 or up to 5 years imprisonment.

Exempltions apply to owning ivory for personal use, giving it away as a gift and leaving it to someone in your will.  I strongly recommend that you check with the legislation in your country if you own any ivory bobbins.

When I first started to make lace in the heady days of the late 1980s I was obsessed with buying big, bulky east midlands bobbins and having heavy spangles with 7 main beads on them.

It was as though I needed something heavy duty to grab as I learned to make lace.

Within a year or so I stared to buy slimmer bobbins and moved to five main beads in the spangle, with small seed beads between the main beads to stop them rubbing.  It was as though as my speed increased I moved from grabbing at the bobbins to 'throwing' them.  This change in technique is somewhat aligned to how when you start to drive you say out loud 'Mirror, sigal, manouver', then after a while you just do that without having to say it.

Gradually I respangled all of my bobbins to match my preferred style and started to move to buying bone bobbins as I could afford them.  

The move to bone bobbins was for a number of reasons:

• When I started lacemaking, quantity of bobbins was more important than expansive bobbins.
• There is something romantic about using bone bobbins on a straw pillow that links you to lacemakers from the past
• Bone bobbins are naturally heavier than wood which means that they can thinnner than wood allowing you to wrangle more bobbins in the same space on your pillow which is perfect for larger and/or more complex pieces.

I usually buy new bobbins unspangled but sometimes this isn't an option and with secondhand, you get what you get.  

I'm always torn as to whether or not to change the spangles on preloved / secondhand bobbins.  They are show you part of the character and personality of the last owner but other times they can be impractical.  ​Often you realise from it's condition that a bobbin has not been used and it's obvious becuase of the spangle. 

They can be unwealdy due to dangling bits or just too heavy or too light.

With bobbins to the right, the one in the middle has 7 beads on it but is of a good weight.  The one to it's left, well, I tried but that dangle just keeps getting in the way.  To it's right is a hinged bobbin whcih I have to say, is perfectly balanced.

So, is there a rule as to how many beads you should have on an East Midland's bobbin?

What I will say is that you are going to find your perfect weight and it may be quickly after you start or much later.  But at some point, you are going to embrace the fact that you need to respangle ALL of your bobbins.

It's inevitable.  Just go with it and enjoy the fun.