![]() Liz writes: From our origins as a small group on FaceBook, back in 2020, we have grown to a group of over 2.3k members as of today. We started as a small project to collect information on modern bobbin lace turners and painters with our remit starting with the UK and from 1970 onwards. Why the 1970s? Well that was when adult education classes took off in the UK and so budding lacemakers had two options: buy second hand or find someone to make new bobbins. I wrote a blog on how Adult Education played an important roled in the educational development of women in the latter 20th Century which you can read here. Jo had a spreadsheet with a number of bobbin turners and painters that she had collated from different sources and we hoped to gather a few together photos of the bobbins we had and a short bio piece, where possible. Fast forward to Easter this year and we launch this website as the culmination of all that work. Lace Bobbins - Find the Maker (FTM) website stands on the shoulders of our FaceBook group. In the past four months we have gained another another 200 members. That's people who have actually joined the goup. You only have to be a member to post or comment in the group. Anyone can view the posts. Which is why in the year to date to today (July 2023 - July 2024) we have had over eightyfive thousand, ninehundred and eighty six visits to the Facebook group. Yes, you read that right; 85,986 views. Just 14 short of 90k this past year. That is an average of 235 views a day this past year, up from an average of 200 views a day at Easter What about our website? Well the website has gone from zero to hero in a just 90 days. We have 779 unique users over the past 90 days with people spending an average of just under 90 seconds on the site. Time enough to find the page, read the info and move on. Which is exactly what we designed the site to do. Most people come to the website from FaceBook (organic social) but we are getting a good number come to us from Organic Search, in other words, they Googled and came to us. So, why is it good that people are finding us on Google?
This is because we have active turners and painters on our site. And us being found on Google will help them. This is ofcourse my day job so I set up FTM the way I would a multi-national blue chip company website. Here is how SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) works.
This has given FTM a great reputation and site score for Google and when we link out to active turners and painters on our site it helps to add extra points to their scores which makes them easier to find when searching. So, the more we add to the site, the more you visit the site and the more people search for the site, the more our active turners and painters benefit from it. A win all round.
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One of the joys of lace bobbins are matching your spangles to your bobbins when you use East Midlands bobbins. For many of us, when we first started to make lace we made our spangles big and heavy and our threads were long. As we became more experienced, we lightened the spangles and made them smaller. Spangles help in two ways, they add tension from their weight and they add stablity from the flatness of the spangle that stops your bobbins rolling on your pillow. When teaching I tend to offer my students slightly heavier spangles to start with, because of this. Over the late May bank holiday we ran two polls on the Find the Maker FB group asking about size and weight of spangles and these are the results. How many beads in your spangle? (106 responses) ![]() How heavy do you like your spangle? (67 responses)
19/5/2024 0 Comments Where do we all come from?Liz writes:
Today I downloaded the geographical locations that our facebook group members come from. The bigger the dot, the more lacemakers are members. 15/5/2024 0 Comments Poll - why do you buy bobbins?In our 4th poll, May 9th, we asked why do you buy bobbins. 208 members of the FTM Facebook group voted.
And big surprise .... NOT ... 32% of us buy them because They are pretty. Do you need a better excuse than that? If you add to that the 16% who bought a bobbin just because I could then we have 48% of us buy bobbins just ... well, because. And why not! Great to see that we are buying commemoratives - between celebrating lace days, national/international events and personal/family events, that accounts for 32% of our bobbin buying. But don't forget bobbin a month clubs. A great way to build up a collection from your favourite maker. Liz writes: At my first lace fair, Springetts, September 1989, I met Shelia Perrin, of SMP Lace. I was carefully watching how much I had to spend and trying to get the most for my small amount of money. I was trying to work out how to afford pillow, bobbins, books ... well everything and she told me to get my basic bobbins so I could start making but find a maker I really liked and sign up to their bobbin a month club. Her advice was to buy the most expensive bobbin I could so that in years to come I had built up a collect that meant something to me. "Even if you just buy one bobbin a month", Sheila siad, "at the end of the year you will have 6 beautiful pairs of bobbins, then at the end of the next year, 12 pairs and so on." I've been making lace for over 30 years. I now have a fantastic collection of bobbins. But those first SMP bobbins, my travel bobbins and my honitons made from different woods are at the heart of that collection and all because Shelia took time to talk with me. ![]() When I first started to make lace, a bobbin from Sarah Jones or Heather Power cost £4.50. Doesn't seem like much now but in those days, my rent was £400 a month. So a bobbin was about a tenth of my monthly rent. I came back from that first lace fair and told my mum about everything I'd seen and how I only had the absolute minimum of equipment (and that had been bought on a pay as you go basis through a club at my work). I told her what Sheila Perrin had said. My mum, the angel that she was, said that she would pay for one bobbin a month as a birthday present so I could buy one a month myself and I'd build up my collection of bobbins quicker. ![]() I chose to buy the Orchids myself and my mum paid for the tulips. Years later, I lost one of the tulips in a house move, a few years after I also lost mum. I reached out to Sarah and asked about replacing it. Sarah explained that she had stopped painting the tulips a while back but if I could work out which I was missing she would see if she still had her original sketches. So, I got out all the tulips, photographed them, sent over the photo and descriptions, Sarah found her sketch and a few weeks later I got my replacement bobbin. Tulips were a particular favourite of both myself and my mum and each time I handle those bobbins I remember the kindness of my mum in buying them and that of Sarah in repainting a lost bobbin. We recently ran a poll on the FTM facebook group asking 'why do you buy bobbins' and 6.2% said that they do because they are members of a bobbin a month club. This is why bobbin a month clubs are so important. |
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© Rothwell Bobbins & thelacebee 2021 Onwards
This site was designed and built by the Liz Baker FIDM
© Rothwell Bobbins & thelacebee 2021 Onwards