Twenty-two of us meet once a month with our pillows, our pins and a great many bobbins, and we make lace the way it has been made by hand for more than four hundred years: one pair of threads crossed over another, one pin at a time. Visitors are always welcome. You may watch for as long as you like, and no one will hurry you. Lacemakers are not, as a rule, in a hurry.

I am Nancy Skidmore, the guild's program chair. I worked as an analytical chemist in Wichita for thirty-one years, and I learned bobbin lace in 1985, when a friend came home from a trip to England with a lace pillow under her arm and no idea how to use it. We taught ourselves out of a book that winter, badly, and then properly at a workshop the following spring. What drew me in, I think, was that lace is exact. A pricking is a kind of formula. If the pairs are counted correctly and each stitch is made as it should be, the lace comes out right, every time. And then, when it is finished and you take out the pins, it is something beautiful as well, which my titrations never were.

About the Guild

The Prairie Rose Lacemakers' Guild began in 1987 with six women at a kitchen table. Today we are twenty-one women and one retired machinist, ages 38 to 85, from Wichita and the towns around it. Some of us have made lace for fifty years. Rosie Berard, our eldest, learned Torchon as a girl from her grandmother, who had learned it in Belgium. Others of us started last spring. Between us we work three kinds of bobbin lace:

Bobbin lace has two cousins, and we are fond of both. Tatting is a row of tiny knots made with a small shuttle, drawn up into rings and chains. Needle lace is made with a needle and thread alone, in rows of buttonhole stitches worked over an outline. Mabel Henry, who tats faster than most of us can talk, is our cousin-in-residence.

Meetings and Dues

We meet the second Saturday of each month, September through June, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in the meeting room of a branch library on the west side of Wichita. (E-mail me for directions.) The first half hour is coffee and show-and-tell. Then comes a short business meeting, then the program, and then we work on our own pieces and help one another until the librarians remind us, kindly, what time it is.

Bring your pillow if you have one. If you don't, come anyway. Guests may come to two meetings before they're asked to join, and no one has yet needed to be asked.

Dues include Pins & Pairs, our newsletter, which Sharon Dubose mails out before each meeting, and borrowing privileges in the guild library: forty-one books and two binders of prickings, kept in a rolling cart by Stella Sowa, who has never lost a thing. Pay Michele Atkinson, our secretary-treasurer.

The Demonstration at the Kansas State Fair

The fair opens tomorrow in Hutchinson and runs through Sunday, September 19. This is our sixth year demonstrating. We will have pillows going with Torchon, Bucks Point and Honiton, Mabel will be tatting, and Peter Warner will bring the bobbins he turns on his lathe from Kansas woods, walnut and hackberry and Osage orange. There will also be a small pillow with a strip of cloth stitch already started, so that anyone who would like to may sit down and make a few stitches. Children are especially welcome at that pillow. Last year a nine-year-old made a quarter inch of very respectable cloth stitch and went off to tell her grandmother.

Our table will be where it was last year. If you get lost, ask at any information booth for the lace ladies. That's what they call us, and Peter has made his peace with it.

Our September meeting is the fair itself. Here are the shifts:

Each shift: bring your own pillow, a cover cloth, a folding chair cushion and water. Mary Johnson will have the cooler. Please do not leave a pillow alone on the table, even for a minute. Bobbins are irresistible to small hands, and to some large ones.

Beginner Classes

Suzanne Madison and I teach a beginner class twice a year, four Tuesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00, at the same library. There are six places, so that each student has one of us at her elbow at least half of every evening. In four weeks you will learn to wind your bobbins, to make cloth stitch and half stitch, and to work a small Torchon bookmark with a fan edge.

Before you come, you might read Bobbin Lace for Beginners. It isn't required, but you will recognize the words when you hear them.

Programs for 1999-2000

Where to Buy Supplies by Mail

There is no lace shop in Wichita. A few of the needlework shops carry pins, and one or two carry suitable threads, but for pillows, bobbins, prickings and books, most of us order by mail. These are the catalogs our members have used and been happy with. The addresses are in the new-member packet, and copies of the catalogs are in the guild library.

A beginner's first set of tools, bought new, costs about this much. You needn't buy any of it before the class.

Officers

President, Kathryn Fears  ○  Program Chair, Nancy Skidmore  ○  Secretary-Treasurer, Michele Atkinson  ○  Librarian, Stella Sowa  ○  Newsletter, Sharon Dubose  ○  Hospitality, Mary Johnson

Fellow fiber folk elsewhere on GeoCities.us: Fleece & Flax, the spinners and weavers of Oregon's mid-Willamette Valley.