No Instant Lacemakers: The Quiet Power of Practice

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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.

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In his book Bounce, Matthew Syed breaks apart the myth of natural talent. What we often call talent, he argues, is really deep, purposeful practice. He writes of table tennis champions and concert pianists, but the thread runs through every craft. Even lace.

Syed calls it deliberate practice — not just repeating an action, but focusing, adjusting and learning with each try. Ten thousand hours, they say. That’s not ten thousand hours of comfort. It’s frustration, unpicking, tiny improvements unnoticed by anyone else.

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.