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.

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.​

Back on the 6th May, we asked the FTM Facebook Group what type of bobbin they use.  208 of our members responded

Whilst we weren't surprised to see that East Midlands, spangled bobbins were top with 50%, we were also surprised that East Midlands, spangles bobbins were top with 50%.

Why?  Well, we have a truely international membership, so all the different bobbin types were really interesting, but as lacemakers, we know just how much we are drawn to a sparkly spangle!

Nice to see that Honiton and Binche get an honourable mention, both coming in at 10% with square bobbins following close behind at 7%.  

On the early May Bank Holiday Sunday this year, 2024, we asked the members of the FTM Facebook Group how they liked their bobbins to be adorned.

We asked: Are you a plain jane or a flower power lacemaker? How do you like your bobbins to look?

182 group members replied and it seems that the group is divided between exotic woods and painted bobbins that catch our eye (or as we put it: whatever the artist is offereing)

Over the early May Bank Holiday this year (2024) we ran a number of polls over on the FTM Facebook group.

We asked our group membership about the woods that they like to have their bobbins made out of.  212 members replied and the results are shown below.

Bone came out just slightly on top with dark wood just behind it.

Each of these two scored nearly 3 times as high as the other reponses.

So - answer the question - our group prefer bone and dark wood bobbins.