Let’s Begin Making Bobbin Lace

About the Book

n honor of Kaethe Kliot’s devotion to teaching and promoting bobbin lace, we have chosen to use a portion of The Kliot Fund to put together this book of simple beginning bobbin lace patterns, with emphasis on teaching children. We hope that she will be looking down on all of the children—and children at heart—learning to make lace.

This spiral-bound book with 78 pages of fun and colorful patterns appropriate for young lacemakers of varying levels, with design contributions from Cathy Belleville, Paula Harten, Kim Davis, Jane Partridge, and Rosemary Shepherd is available at The Lace Museum, in our online shop, on Amazon and at the IOLI Convention. The price is $29.99.

When to Copy/Buy

The question we have received the most is, Is it really ok to make copies for students? The short answer is, yes. We fully support your hesitation to copy materials and respect copy rights. Intellectual property is a mainstay of the lace making community.

We will spell out the numerous situations we have encountered to help your decision-making process:

Situations Where Making a Copy of One Page is OK

  1. Make and Take for any children’s or non-profit endeavor such as outreach, schools, fairs, church groups, scouting groups, birthday parties, etc. We have included our information at the bottom of each page, including the title of the book, for this purpose. Giving people a copy of the page with the project they have worked with you is ok.
  2. You are teaching an individual and you need to give them a page or pages with a diagram or other supporting material for their homework.

When It is Appropriate for Someone to Buy a Book

  1. They are asking for more than one pattern.
  2. You are planning to work through the entire book with them.
  3. They really took off and they would like to use the book to share what they are learning with others.

When to Make an Exception

We extend decisions regarding low income students to your discretion. Keeping in line with our non-profit mission, there are instances where we share resources with people who are passionate about lace making but literally can not afford to do so.

Make a Square Knot

The square knot (also called a reef knot) is a good basic way to finish up after making a sewing. Remember to tie the first half of the knot right over left and the second half left over right. Do not pull the first half so much that it distorts the lace, but do make the knot firm. Try to hide your knots in denser, less open areas of the lace (like cloth stitch).

Button/Badge Templates

When we are tasked with giving a demonstration to children, sometimes we are provided with thread that is not ideal. Because this happens, we have a workaround for dealing with sub-par thread.

Most of the patterns in the “Fast Projects for Small Hands” section are small and require stiff threads. Limp thread or projects that curl up are the largest problem. When proper thread is not used, we will put the item into a badge or button. Check out the book for more details on the setup and threads we use for demonstration!

We have created a few templates in different colors for you to use for your children’s lace making events, although you may need to shrink or enlarge them. The rectangular templates are designed for a 3.5″ x 2.25″ pinback nametag, and the circles fit into 2.25″ round buttons.

Click on the images to get the three page PDFs to print. There are badges and buttons in three colors, with and without Lace Museum text.

Rainbow Project Decoration

Click on the image to get a set of decorations for the rainbow project on page 48 that you can print and color!