In this section…
My Teaching
Work from a Scottish lace course
Over the past twenty years I’ve taught many people to make bobbin lace — some have taken to it like ducks to water, others have struggled a bit at first but got there in the end, while a few have decided it’s not for them. I enjoy making lace and I want my students to enjoy making lace too, so I try to provide the instruction they need while recognizing that everyone has different ideas about what they want to achieve and a different demands on their time. I have a set syllabus for beginners which they can work through at their own pace, and once they’ve done that I suggest various possibilities, but the final choice of what to work on next is theirs. In most classes everyone is doing something different so I’ve had to learn to be versatile.
I teach Torchon, Bucks Point and Bedfordshire lace to advanced level, but can also cover the basics of other laces including Honiton, Bruges, and Milanese, together with needlelace and tatting. I also teach lace identification, and have led short identification workshops for the Lace Guild at its Conventions and one-day Lace Study Sessions at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. The most recent of these was for museum textile curators under the auspices of Dress and Textile Specialists (DATS), and the booklet that accompanied this workshop can be downloaded from their website.
At the moment, because of the pandemic, I am teaching my lace classes using Zoom. Based on my experience of this I have produced a couple of guides which may be useful to other lace and textile teachers. They are on a separate page.
In addition to lacemaking, I teach workshops on assorted braids for beginners including braids on cards, lucet braids, tablet-woven braids and loop-manipulated braids. Please if you would like any further information.
Current Teaching Schedule for 2020
Zoom classes: Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings, other times by arrangement
Provisional Teaching Schedule for 2021
Zoom classes: Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings, other times by arrangement
IOLI Convention: 25th to 30th July
Lacemaking Holidays at Gartmore House, near Aberfoyle, Scotland
Sunday 28th February to Friday 5th March
Sunday 2nd to Friday 7th May
Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th September
Sunday 10th to Friday 15th October
Sunday 7th to Friday 12th November
Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th December