Jean Leader
Lacemaker and Textile Enthusiast
Floral Bucks Point Patterns
designed by Joyce Symes, edited by Jean Leader
Joyce Symes was a lace teacher whom I first met at a weekend Bucks Point course in Scotland when I was still fairly new to lacemaking. She was very encouraging and I was delighted that with her help I was able to start and complete a Bucks Point handkerchief corner. There were other courses with her after this, all equally enjoyable. I last saw her in 1993 at The Lace Guild’s ‘Lace in Nature’ exhibition in Birmingham. By then she had been diagnosed with the breast cancer from which she died a year later. A couple of years later my father died from prostate cancer, so when I heard that Joyce's daughter, Maggy, wanted to publish her mother's patterns to raise money for cancer research, I was happy to help her do this. For various reasons it has taken rather a long time to produce the book, but despite this I am sure that the nineteen patterns will be enjoyed by all enthusiasts for floral Bucks Point lace.
The picture on the left is of one of the handkerchief edgings where Joyce used an old unit pricking (one complete repeat of a pattern draft) from Luton Museum and designed a corner and side reversal to complement it. There are also prickings for mats, a handkerchief corner and a small motif. Except for the corner and the small motif, each pricking is accompanied by a picture of the lace and the thread used, and number of bobbins needed are given where the information was available. These are patterns for lacemakers with some experience of working floral Bucks Point lace, but I hope they will also be a goal for newcomers to Bucks Point lace to work towards.
Book details
Floral Bucks Point Patterns
designed by Joyce Symes
edited by Jean Leader
28 pp, A4 size, UK Price: £12.00 incl. P&P
All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to further cancer research.
Sample pages in pdf format (web quality) can be downloaded here.