Lace Workshop - Part 2

While the rest of the household was barely waking up, I was up packing my lunch and setting off early, of once, to the lace workshop. My workshop experiences have been very limited and I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

About a month earlier I had received a call from Judie, a member of the SLC guild, asking what loom I would be bringing and what lace pattern I would be interested in warping on my loom. We finally settled on a huck lace pattern on 4 shafts that she later sent me the draft to use to warp my loom.

I ended up using a #5 crochet cotton, Cable 5 by Karabella, for both the warp and weft threads. For some wacky reason I just didn’t want to warp the pattern in just one color, so I did three: purple on the edges, medium green on either side and a lighter lime green in the center. Definitely eye catching.

The pattern was on 4 shafts using 123 threads and a 15 dent reed with one thread in each dent. My Leclerc Voyageur loom had a 12 dent reed so I had to sley the warp threads with this pattern 1-1-1-2 to compensate. We were to warp our looms with four yards of warp for the workshop. Below is my warping pattern for the loom, the arrows show where the color changes would occur.

One the way back to SLC from the Guild meeting in Provo Thursday night in Kathleen’s carpool van, I found out from Deanna and Litza that the workshop was a round robin. We would weave the pattern given to us on our own loom and then move to someone else’s loom and weave their pattern, thereby getting a variety of pattern samples.

It then dawned on me that I had only brought stick shuttle to weave with, thinking that I would be the only one using my loom and I was comfortable using stick shuttles since I weave on small rigid heddle looms so much. But I know other weavers prefer boat shuttles, and I did a small internal panic. Finally I decided if people wanted to weave with a boat shuttle they could use one of their own since I didn’t have any, and just wind the bobbins with my warp thread. I did learn a lesson for future workshops, bring boat shuttles even if I’m using stick shuttles, just in case.


Suzie Liles was an enjoyable teacher, kind, down-to-earth, very practical, and had a good sense of humor. Besides the basic lace weaving material, I learned to use up less warp in spreading the warp before beginning to weave, an easier, quicker hem stitch, and how to tie an additional warp onto the loom using the same threading pattern. The hem stitch was almost worth the cost of the workshop.

I also learned that I must be the world’s slowest weaver. I’m the kind of student I never really wanted to have in class, the last one done. I guess now that I was on the student end and much older, and it’s not for a grade, I’d rather do it right. I can remember a time when I would never redo a section, now I will take the time to tear it out, if it’s weaving or knitting and redo it. Maybe I’m more critical or maybe I know I can do better, anyway I now don’t rush through projects.


It took me all of the first day of the workshop to weave my huck lace pattern with it’s variations as given to us by the instructor. I even took the loom home and after Jack and Katie Jane went to bed I did my homework. After the bowling birthday party the parents and grandfather were wiped out so by nine o’clock everyone was in bed but me. I finally finished weaving the huck pattern and doing the hem stitch to separate the pieces so I would be ready to start weaving on someone else’s loom tomorrow. I stuck a piece of painter’s blue masking tape with my name on it to the weaving, put the loom and stand in the back of the car, and went to bed about midnight.