Wednesday 20 April 2016


Cultures of Repair Past and Present

Goldsmiths, University of London


  I was lucky to get a ticket to this event, which consisted out of a morning of lectures and a workshop in darning by Tom of Holland in the afternoon.
We started of with a lecture, by Vivienne Richmond, about a book of samplers from the Whitelands College Collection now part of the University of Roehampton.  Whitelands was the first all-women teacher-training college which was established in 1841.  Its stated purpose: 'to produce a superior class of parochial Schoolmistresses'.  As part of their training, they had to make a sampler of several ways of darning linnens.  Swiss darning was used to reinforce fabric by embroidery.  The example in the photo is about 2.5cm by 2cm.  The stitches are minute.






This elaborate Swiss darning has never been found on antique textiles, so it probably was just an exercise in fine needlework.
  We also had a talk by Lizzie cannon, an artist.  She takes items that are damaged or decaying and by "repairing" or empathising the decay, creates art. 


Wednesday 13 January 2016

Kantopleiding LOKK


I was looking for a bit more direction and something to aim for in my lacemaking.  Then the LOKK, the Dutch lace society, announced they are restarting the lace teacher program in a different format.  So I have decided to do this study, because you can study at home with or without a lace teacher.  The study is in modules and each module tells you what techniques you have to do.  So you can look for patterns, that have these techniques in them or you can design your own.
   On the LOKK website you can find what you have to do for each module, unfortunately in Dutch only.  I couldn't go to the meeting to find out, how much it is going to cost to have your work assessed, but that is a concern for a later date.  At the moment, only the basic module and the torchon modules are published on the website.  But these will give enough work to get on with.
  It also solves another problem I have, what project to take with me to lace meetings.  I don't want to take a complicated project with me, because let's be honest we all like good chat.  I find with Torchon , once I've started and done a repeat it's quite easy.
  So for my first pattern , I slightly changed a free pattern from the "Kantje van de maand" on the LOKK website (look under the heading "Patronen", you can find some lovely free patterns).
It's almost finished, my next project will be on the same pricking using different techniques.