Scandinavian Lace and What to Buy

This module reconstructs two lace classes. North House Folk School’s two-day Bobbin Lace Making is taught by Kelly Marshall, who “learned bobbin lace making, or knyppling, while studying in Sweden where the lace is often made for folk costumes”; students explore “the Scandinavian Torchon technique” and make a window ornament or holiday decoration, bringing small sharp scissors, a #14 crochet hook, and paper and pencil ¹. The Swedish lace society Föreningen Svenska Spetsar in Vadstena runs a five-day beginner’s course, Monday morning to Friday noon, lending pillows and bobbins ². Neither class plan is published; this follows the sources cited.

Scandinavian lace

Bobbin lace has been made in Sweden since the early 1700s, as a cottage trade around Vadstena; Svenska Spetsar has worked to keep it alive since 1962, and Ottilia Adelborg founded a lace school in Gagnef in 1903. In Dalarna lace is worked freehand, without a pricking, with pins only at the edges ³. In Denmark, Tønder lace began in 1647 with lacemakers from Westphalia, and by 1801 some 20,000 people in the district made lace ⁴. In Norway, finer lace can need several hundred bobbins ⁵.

The pillow

The pillow is hard, not squashy. A round, domed cookie pillow is cheap and good to start on, though poor for long pieces; a roller pillow carries the pricking around a turning cylinder, so the lace can be any length ⁶. The traditional Scandinavian pillow is a padded, turning wooden cylinder sunk into a cushion ^{5 3}. Dalarnas museum’s Vadstena pillow is 56 cm square with 36 bobbins ⁷; its Dalarna pillow, a roll in a pine box, has 15 ⁸.

Bobbins and pins

Bobbins are about 4 inches long. The simplest patterns use 6 pairs and most 15 to 25; start with 10 to 12 pairs of inexpensive bobbins. Pins need small heads so the threads slide over them ⁶. Van Sciver sells Belgian 4-inch bobbins at $15 a dozen, pins by size, pricking card, and ethafoam cookie pillows from $39 ⁹; Mielke’s sells Danish bobbins, a pricker, a roller pillow, and a beginner’s kit ¹⁰.

Thread

Linen lace thread is labeled like 35/2: the first number is the size, higher meaning finer, and the second the number of plies. Mielke’s carries Bockens linen from 35/2 to 100/2 in bleached, half-bleached, and natural for $14 to $16 a spool ¹⁰. Start with 35/2, which is easy to see and handle.

Try it

Before your bobbins arrive, cut four 3-foot lengths of string, tie them to a pin stuck in a cushion, and practice the cross and twist from lesson 2 by hand. The moves are the whole craft; the bobbins only make them faster.