Hippocrafty aka Ami

"I think of my comrades, do they think of me?"

Silver says "perhaps, just perhaps, you're a god-damn genius"

Had to refill my worker-bobbins for the scallops three times! They *eat* thread! Now I'm running low on some other bobbins so I decided to stop here.

So fascinated by how the colours move!

It's this pattern from Jo Edkins worked in DMC Perle 8 on a 4mm grid.

Getting the pricking right was a challenge!

It's an about 30cm long strip of rose ground on a background of cloth stitch and twist ground in a lighter blue-green and a darker blue-green.

The rose ground (being half-stitch, pin, half-stitch) makes the colours travel in interesting ways. I used Jo Edkin's Bobbin Lace school beginner Torchon lace pattern for rose ground and fans as inspiration, but rather than making fans on the sides, I just made cloth-stitch-and-twist ground.

This is my lace cushion. I made it myself. I started with a 1 foot by 1 foot cork flooring tile (hardware store) then added nine 10cm x 10cm x 5cm cubes of foam. Here's one of my foam cubes that I use as my pincushion:

It's 10 by 10cm and 5 cm thick/tall. I got them from a foam-and-rubber (and swimming pool supplies) store and the people at the store were kind enough to cut them for me -- I got 15 of these cubes cut. My dad recommends, if you want to cut your own foam and don't have the specialist tools, use an electric bread-slicing knife (and wear a dust-filtering mask!). I had success cutting one of my blocks in half myself using a very long serrated knife my brother-in-law usually uses to cut very large birthday cakes with, but the right tools would be a lot faster!

Once I got my foam blocks home, I used double sided tape to stick a layer of thin craft foam (the kind that comes in A4 sheets from the office-supplies place) on the two 10 by 10 cm sides, then stuck a thin layer of felt (the kind that kids use for craft, which also comes in A4 sheets from office stores) on top of that. Then I cut up an old bedsheet and sewed fabric over the blocks (that's the red stitching along the edge, I handstiched as I'm afraid of sewing machines).

So I used strong sticky heavy duty hook-and-loop tape to fix the four outer corner blocks to my cork tile, then just fitted the five inner blocks to the cork tile so they slide.

The four green besquiggled blocks are the fixed ones, and the two purple besquiggled blocks and the three with my pattern on are free-sliding.

Now i just pin squares of the thin foam & the felt over the blocks I'm working on, as well as my pricking, and bobbin-lace away. When I get near the end of the block nearest my belly, I push the three blocks in the middle up and insert a half-a-block in.

My half-a-block. Then when i am too close again, I slide another full block in. That's when I usually take the pins out of the block at the top of my cushion (furthest from me) and roll my progress up.

About to take the pins out and roll up the progress: that's what the black bundle/coil is - the bobbin lace what I've already made on this project thus far.

So I love my cushion and I think it works really well, certainly better than the pillow-with-a-towel-on-it I did my very first projects on. The best bit is that I don't have to slide my work up and try to re-pin it because I can just add new blocks to the side closest to me and take completed blocks off the side furthest from me - I never actually reposition my work on the pins or the pricking, I just move it around while it's still pinned.