The extra large bobbin lace piece made with plarn (plastic yarn) is complete! There was some trial and error with this project, so I am glad I made a sample. The plarn width was perfect for the grid size I chose, which was the biggest obstacle. If the sizing was not correct, more samples would have been required.

The largest difficulty I had was keeping the plarn on the bobbins. As you can see I took the bobbins off. The plarn hitches continued to lose their hold and fall off the bobbins.

This brings me to my next problem. Without bobbins, the plarn was too light. Weight and gravity are very helpful for bobbin lace pieces. The bobbins typically help provide constant tension for the thread. No bobbins equals no tension. As you may have noticed, I added washers to the end of each plarn strip to provide a little added weight.

I also need to mention the need to work from an external pattern. Normally in bobbin lace, the pattern is under the lace you are making. This makes it easy to keep up with your place in the pattern. Since I am working on a peg board, I couldn’t figure out an easy way to add the pattern to the board. Instead, I put my printed pattern on a Styrofoam rectangle and used pins to keep my place.

With the obstacles worked through, I was able to make lace. The plarn was not easy to work with, but perhaps that was just a learning curve. I hated fighting the material so it would stay on the bobbins. The workability was improved after I gave up using bobbins. I think the final product was quite pretty. The material also seems very sturdy, which will help in an outdoor space.