Beaker Button Blog

Just a quickie, to brag very loudly about having a tutorial published in Make and Craft magazine.  I've posted photos and links below. http://www.makeandcraft.com/ The tutorial shows you how to make a Grindle button, which are nothing to do with Dorset buttons as far as anyone knows, but are made in a very similar way.  They're great fun and have all sorts of uses, both decorative and practical.  By the way, I met a very nice lady recently from the Lace Society  who told me that Tenerife lace is made using the same stitching technique as Dorset buttons.  I'm going to have a jolly good play (I've been reading WW2 books again and it's affecting my vocabulary) and see how many different buttons I can come up with using Tenerife lace techniques. Grindle

I spent a very enjoyable day on Monday in the shop with some dear friends, being taught how to make Torchon lace by another dear friend.  I started the day in complete bewilderment, with no idea what was expected of me or what I was going to do.  I've never made anything like lace before.  Basically you use bobbins wound with thread or in our case yarn, a large straw, foam or polystyrene covered cushion and lots of pins.  You weave the bobbins in set patterns to create stitches, the pins hold the threads in place where necessary.  Sue, our teacher, gave us dotted paper which is the pattern you work to.  I took to it like a duck to water.  For some reason the whole process felt completely logical once I'd got started.  Mind you, I couldn't explain it to anyone else, but give me time.  I've added a couple of photos below to show you what I did.  Beaker Button will hopefully be adding this class to our workshop program very shortly, a...