Lace for pin cushions, pitsiä neulatyynyn reunaan

After finishing my knitted silk stocking project I’ve had time get other things done too! I’ll post about the stocking later, but here are two bobbin lace edgings I’ve been working on and just managed to sew into pin cushions. The blue one is a copy of a very pretty pin cushion that Greta from my lace making course had on her bobbin pillow. It’s a Torchon lace pattern by Mollie Buckle and has two different sized borders which are then sewn together. The other pattern is from our lace making teacher Jean Leader’s book “An Introduction to Bedfordshire Lace”.

I ordered some new bobbins for this project from Klöppelshop (kloeppelshop.de) and used a variegated Gütermann cotton 12, which is probably a little thicker than the original DMC Retors 50 stated in the pattern. 13 pairs for the narrower spider border and 22 pairs for the wider edging.

For the Bedfordshire lace border I used the old Finnish bobbins and an unbleached linen thread 70. With the same pricking I made a very narrow little edging in the same manner as for the blue one. The pattern is a modernized version of typical 17th century laces, so I’m planning to use it again to make some more historical lace for my son 🙂

The first cushion I made for the blue lace was some old upholstery velvet that was a nice matching colour. I changed plans after I noticed that the pins left little hole marks in the material and used some mauve linen instead. I filled the cushion with what I remember my dressmaker grandmother as saying was the best filling for a pin cushion i.e. human hair! After a spur of the moment lockcdown at-home haircut I had just enough to make the cushion nice and plump.

For the other one I used some silky cushion wadding into which the pins don’t sink at all as easily and which also is much lighter. There are many better traditional fillings for a pin cushion including sheeps’ wool and emery powder as mentioned in Molly Buckle’s instructions, but unfortunately none at hand. The fabric is a printed cotton satin which makes the cushion resemble a little painting 🙂

They turned out very pretty, so I’ll probably be making more of these for gifts…