How to make a bobbin lace bolster pillow

I dismantled my makeshift bolster pillow for parts.

Here's a photo of it all unrolled with the blue cover fabric on the bottom, then thin green blanket, the bath sheet and the milo tin.

That's my phone and a bobbin for size referencing because I didn't have a banana on hand.

The pillow core

To make my permanent bolster pillow I used a bit of storm drain pipe we bought as an off cut from some crazy boy shop that sold lots of tubes and stuff used in building houses and gardens and whatever. The pipe is the core of the bolster.

The layers

I also bought a double camping mat. When I bought the double camping mat I knew I was going to have to cut it in half lengthways and if I had bought 2 singles I wouldn't have had to do that. But the singles were only 0.5cm thick where as the double was 0.8cm thick, and in this case thicker is better.

I used a bread knife to cut the mat in half whilst it was all rolled up then I wrapped it around my pipe.

The pipe and the tin were about the same diameter but the pipe was certainly longer.

I wrapped my old wool army blanket around the mat. I assume it's a 100% wool blanket but it might not be.

100% wool is hard to find these days. A lot of sellers will claim 100% wool or high wool content and it won't be what they have claimed so all I can say is be careful. Buy vintage if you can and if you can't, be prepared to not get what you thought you were ordering.

The reason for using 100% wool in your lace making pillow is so you can push your pins through easily. So long as you can do that I guess that's all that really matters.

I wrapped my thin  green higher quality wool blanket around the army blanket.

I made sure the ends butted up against each other without overlapping which causes bumps and generally tried to keep everything reasonably smooth.

Then I just pinned the last edge into place.

Covering the bolster

To cover everything I decided the easiest option was to use a stretch knit cotton pencil skirt which cost $5 from somewhere and no longer fit me.

I stood the whole thing up on it's end and rolled it on sort of like stockings.

To pull the cover over the ends I layed the pillow back down, bunched up the ends and used hair bands to secure them.

The stand

Hubby had made me a bolster pillow stand which I was really hoping was going to be the right size because it was made before the cushion was made. It was just some ply wood and dowel with a lick of paint.

The main features I was aiming for was a stable base where the pillow wouldn't roll from pulling on bobbins and that the pins could stay in the pillow as I turned the cushion when making braids, which was a major draw back of my cardboard box version.

The final diameter was 39 and half inches.

Of course I've been itching to make something on it ever since I had it all put together.

I knew exactly what I wanted to make too.

Marguerite de Valois, ca. 1563 
Francois Clouet
 Musée Condé, Chantilly

I wanted to do the Margurite le Pompe lace in silver.

Saturday I finally sat down and made it. One 25m skein and many hours gave me 32 inches of pretty pretty silver lace.

This thread is plied together and has a lot of texture to it because of the ply which made it rather challenging to work with but also gave a really nice body to lace.

I was so pleased that the pins clear the pillow frame easily. Yay!

The lace is still on the pillow so it can set. I want to try the regular embroidery thread to see how it compares as well.