THE SPECIAL PEOPLE WHO HAVE CHAIRED OUR GUILD by Janis Savage
1980 – 1983 Jean Horne started our guild in 1980, with a dozen members, after teaching tatting and then bobbin lace at the adult education centre in St Andrews Road, Parktown. Her classes there soon got too big for the facilities available so along with Ine Meereboer, she started this guild here at the Roosevelt Park Recreation Centre, It seemed natural to call us the Witwatersrand Lace Guild as the Witwatersrand Embroidery Guild, which she was also instrumental in starting, also met here and still does.
I arrived in South Africa in the middle of 1979 and, before leaving England, got Jean’s name and address from the English Lace Guild. After a couple of months I plucked up the courage to find Jean’s home and I knocked on the door (which you could do in those days ), and introduced myself. She welcomed me with open arms and here I am 35 years later, having joined the Embroidery guild and the Lace guild as one of the original members.
In January 1982 she wrote the very first Lace Chatter (a one page letter). and in the May we had the first Lace Picnic. The local membership at that time was 25 as well as a number of overseas members. By June 1982, the membership had grown to 80. This necessitated an increase in the membership fee to R5.00 and a larger Lace Chatter. Jean continued to write the Lace Chatter until the end of 1986 and for many more years.she generously shared her knowledge with us, with workshops and information, More about Jean later.
1984 – 1985 Lynda Brophy took over from Jean. Unfortunately I was unable to contact her but researched her term with the help of old Lace Chatters.
In 1984 we held our first proper Lace Day with a speaker and workshops as well as lace on display and bobbins etc for sale. For the first time too, lace was included in the Rand Easter Show where Jean won a silver medal. The Cape Show, the Pretoria show and the Royal show in PMG also included lace and as far as I know, the Cape and PMG still do. We held exhibitions at the Braamfontein Hotel, the Old Market Museum, the Bernberg museum, Melrose House Pretoria and Abany Museum in Grahamstown. In 1985 we moved our meetings to an unused garage at the Bernberg museum and gave it the name of the Pin Inn. We had many happy meetings there.
1986 – 1987 Next came Mary Hughes. 1986 was Johannesburg’s centenary year. And we started that year with a local membership of 180 and overseas members. South African lace was also mentioned in many overseas lace magazines. Our guild made a group entry for the Rand Show commemorating the centenary, It was a cushion with a protea design on it, each segment made by different members. This was exhibited at the UK OIDFA congress in Brighton and was included in the English Lace Exhibition which toured the country. We exhibited at many places and had 2 REAL lace picnics at Emmarentia Dam. We also appeared on TV3 with children from a programme “Mpha tla la tsane” in Sotho which we could not understand but the children enjoyed themselved.
Mary told me that at the end of her term, she had to be secretary, editor of the Lace Chatter and treasurer as well as being chairlady, due to committee members resigning for various reasons. Well done Mary.
1988 – 1989 Myrna Fandam. During Myrna’s term a competition was held to design a logo for our guild. The winning design came from Alison Griffiths, a future chairlady of the guild, and you can see it on our birthday cake. In 1988 our group entry to the Rand Show of butterflies was awarded a first prize,
Also at the Rand Show, the President of the Belgian Kantcentrum brought lace to exhibit and brought 3 expert lacemakers with him to demonstrate. Myrna invited them to her home afterwards and we had a wonderful day there. I remember watching the lacemakers making petals and square tallies the Belgian way, for ever, until I had imprinted it on my mind. We also had the first visit by Yvonne Scheele who gave a beginners course on Withof lace. While she was here, a small group of us, including Yvonne drove to Kwazulu Natal to teach bobbin lace to members of the Mothers Union of Zululand. It was a wonderful experience but not many of them continued to make lace.
Another significant event in 1990 was the discovey of Lady Florence Phillips lace collection in the store room of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Jennifer Erasmus was reading the Lady Phillips biography and it kept on mentioning her lace collection which she donated to the new Art Gallery, so after many telephone calls Jennifer managed to locate it at the Art Gallery and a group of us went to view it in boxes in the storeroom.
Later a small group of members led by Jean Horne and Alison Griffiths took it upon themselves to sort, clean and catalogue the lace ready for it’s permanent home in specially made display cases in the new auditorium at the Gallery.
In 1989 we move our meetings to Parktown North Methodist Church. We were invited to exhibit and demonstrate at King David’s school in Victory Park and Myrna and Lynda Brophy appeared on TV explaining how lace was made.
1990 – 1991 Carolyn Einhorn became our next chairlady and at the beginning of September we made a trip to Koppies to visit the place where the first lace school was established. The Free State lacemakers had put on an exhibition and Jean Horne made a speech on the heritage and future of hand made lace. In the afternoon we visited the Koppies Old Age Home where the Koppies Lace is preserved, and listened to a talk by Mrs R de Wet, who had been a pupil at the lace school when a young girl.
Then in the same month the 'LACE 10' exhibition was held at Roedean School for 2 days before being moved to Melrose House for a further 2 months. September was a very busy month that year as, later in the month, a group went off to Ermelo to demonstrate at the wool festival where we were in a very hot and dusty shed next to the sheep sheering competition.
In October 1990 Yvonne Scheele made her second trip here to teach more Withof Lace.
1991 started with the First South African Lace Convention at Sunnyside Guest Farm at Clarens, organised by Jean Horne. It was a great success with lacemakers coming from all over the country and a great time was had by all. During the week we had 2 lace courses, talk on a variety of topics, social evenings and an outing to Qwa Qwa.
We had another picnic outing. This time to Rina Steyns’s farm in Ermelo where we were given a sheep sheering demonstration by Oom Dirk
1992 Alison Grifiths only served for one year as during October 1992 she gave birth to her daughter Emma, but she made up for it later.
Jean organised another lace convention at Clarens. It was another great success but afterwards Jean felt she could no longer commit herself to so much work to organise another one. So we had to wait until 2012 before another convention was held, but we had a lot of fun in the meantime.
During this year we had our usual happy times and we had the first of our exhibitions at the Floreum at Emmarentia Dam. Alison had also been busy for 4 years classifying Lady Phillips lace collection and writing the catalogue. This was ready for the official opening of the Lady Phillips Lace Collection at the Jhb Art Gallery on May 20th 1993 and we had our lace meeting at the Art Gallery on May 23rd 1993.
1993 – 1994 Helen Grant is unable to be here as she now lives in George where she started the Outeniqua Lace Guild. She sent a greeting message to us. When she became our chairlady, the guild moved it’s meetings again. This time to The Floreum. In 1993, the guild was invited to exhibit and demonstrate lacemaking at the Grahamstown Festival. Guild members offered their special pieces to exhibit (as they usually do) and I got the task of taking it to Grahamstown for 2 weeks. The Lady Phillips lace.collection was taken there too and there was a lot of interest in it and in our lace. I was also filmed for Transkei TV.
The picnics we had were an Easter Bonnet picnic and a Teddy Bear’s picnic, donating the teddy bears to charity. In May 1994 we had a fashion show in Helen’s garden where we all wore our lace. In September we had a picnic at The Lace Place and Helen managed to borrow the . Battle of Britain lace panel from the SA National Museum of Military History. Aletta Penning made some repairs to it and for those of you who know my house, it was hung from the upstairs balcony into the lounge. This will never be able to happen again.
1995 – 1996 Margaret Jackson became our chairlady and she organised a lot of workshops to increase our knowledge of lace and even designed prickings to challenge us. Floral Bucks lace expert Sandra Straughair visited us from England and gave a course on Floral Bucks. All organised by Jean Horne and most of the participants discovered that they could do a lot more than they thought they could. I started my Miss Channers Mat, the pricking of which I had had for several years and did not know where to start.
With Sandra’a help I had made one flower by the time she left and about 4 years later, I had finished it. Together with Mary, Margaret taught bobbin lace to girls between 8 and 12 years years at St Katherine’s school. She started the sales table to raise funds for the guild as membership had been gradually falling fom it’s early high and we needed funds for the library. She also started the guild on giving to charity once a year. Her term ended with another successful exhibition at the Floreum.
1997 – 1998 saw Alison Griffiths taking on another term as chairlady. Amongst many interesting meetings and workshops one of my favourite memories was doing the Lace Dance in Helen Grant’s garden. I had been sent a video of the traditional lace dance in Finland after an OIDFA Congress in Finland and we decided to have a go ourselves. It is a bit like a maypole dance. A roseground pricking was marked out on Helen’s lawn and various lacemakers were delegated to be bobbins and hold the ribbon. Other lacemakers were delegated to hammer the pins or pegs into the ground. Well, the over and under of cross left over right and twist right over left were a sight to behold as we danced around each other. The runners, who had to put in the pins, had amazing patience, waiting for each tangle to be sorted out so that they could run up and hammer in a peg and we all laughed until we cried, but we did eventually finish the small pricking. The lunch after that was most welcome. We had a worsmonay instead of hogmanay at the January meeting when Rhoda Booyens piped in the boerewors. The March picnic was held at Manie’s beautiful home in Heidelberg. Yvonne Scheele visited again to see how her Withof pupils were getting on – not very well without her.
The first December Play Day meeting was held in Alison’s term for those of us who do not go away in December as well as the Bring and Share concept. Before that, the committee always made the eats. I think the committee was younger in those day. 1998 ended with the guild’s Biennial Lace Exhibition at the Floreum
1999 – 2000 After serving on the guild’s committee as treasurer, Tina du Plooy took on the job of chairlady. The first picnic we had was another fun one, with the Nags & Fillies Races, organised by Helen Grant. Lacemakers were divided into 2 teams, each one nominating one or more lacemaker to make the lace on the same torchon pricking. The others helped her by putting in the pins or rewinding bobbins and bets were laid on which team could finish the lace first. I don’t remember who won but you should have heard the shouting of encouragement and the cheers of the winners.
A lot of workshops were organised during Tina;s term and we demonstrated at as many occasions that we could including the Miniature Enthusiasts Trading Fair where there was so much interest in lace for the dolls houses, that Tina decided we should make one of our own. Sue Engall from the Miniatures Society made the Lace Maker’s Cottage and everyone made a piece of lace for it but it is sadly now missing.
We also had a picnic at the Sammy Marks museum at Bronkhorstspruit.A series of guild calendars started to be produced in 1999, and in 2000, we had our first picnic at Catherine Love’s Victorian house in Auckland Park where Yvonne Scheele gave a talk on Lace from around the world.
A bumper Commemorative Lace Chatter was produced to coincide with the 20th Anniversary exhibition..Tina also started our 3 metre club for our members who like to make metres of lace. A number of members have certificates to commemorate their 3 metres.
2001 – 2004 Renee Michas then became chairlady and served for 4 years. Renee had us dabbling in other crafts as well as lacemaking. We made Vicorian Cards and beaded Christmas angels but we also made lace crocodiles, butterflies and angels as well,
Due to several robberies at the Floreum, it was decided in 1992 to move our meetings back to our original home, Roosevelt Park Recreation centre and we joined our exhibition with the Witwatersrand Embroidery Guild for the first time. A new lace guild banner was made for this first exhibition with members each making a letter of the name.
In 2004 the guild demonstrated at Hobbyex for the first time. In recent years it has become too expensive.
2005 – 2008 Annette Emdon took over from Renee and also served for 4 years. She also started us on other crafts as well as lace. We made felt mice and beaded South African flag spangles and French beaded Roses. We also made lace Christmas Decorations, owls, spiders and easter eggs and the members of the 3 metre club donated their lace edgings to be made into tea showers to be sold at the exhibitions. Mary taught us how to sew our lace onto fabric and Linda talked to us about wire lace.
Members of the guild donated pins and thread for Louis Booyens to take to India for the lacemakers at the convent of the Church of our Lady at Pallaruthi Bridge inSouthern India. Unfortunately the lace and embroidery school at the convent had been closed down, but he donated the supplies to the remaining lacemakers. The lace exhibitions continue to be shared with the Embroidery Guild and it is a good partnership.
2009 – 2010 Next, Lindsay Roper took her turn as chairlady. In preparation for the 2010 exhibition, we made torchon squares for a tablecloth to be raffled at the exhibition. We also had a workshop on making lace hats. A few were ready for the exhibition. Members of the Tuesday group made green lace to decorate Gayle Hardy’s wedding. Very effective. The 2010 exhibition was our 30th anniversary and another bumper Lace Chatter was produced, where many members were asked to write about how they o started to learn lacemaking. Another successful exhibition was held.
2011 – 2014 Louis Oosthuizen became our first chairman in 2011 and his big mission was to organise the 3rd National Lace Convention in 2012 at Bloemfontein and what a good job he made of it. He also conned me into making the Vroemonument in lace for the monuments centenary in 2013.
Before all that could happen though there were a few other happenings at the guild. Margaret Jackson and Mary Hughes, being our oldest members, were made Honorary Life Members for their services to the guild.
Carolyn held a 30th birthday party for the guild members at her home. We had a very successful exhibition and demonstration at the Flower and Lace Festival held at Villa Arcadia in September 2011.
In 2012 we learned to make Chaotic Lace – deliberately chaotic, that is. And then it was time for the 2012 lace Exhibition at Roosevelt Park with the Embroidery guild where lacemakers pulled out all the stops as usual.
Straight after this exhibition, it was time to pack up all the lace and head off to Bloemfontein for the convention held in October. Well Louis. it all came together on the day and every day that week. The Lace exhibited was breathtaking, the workshops for beginners and Milanese Lace were extremely well done. The talks and wreathlaying ceremony and all the other activities went off without a hitch and you must be congratulated for all the hard work that you put into it. From those beginners, Bloemfontein now has a thriving lace community as well. Sadly another convention in 2013 did not take place but we had a lovely lace picnic day at Koppies in April.
Later in 2013 we demonstrated at the International Quilt Festival at Emporers Palace, at the Naaldekoker Embroidery Exhibition at the Portuguese Old Age Home and at Hobbyex.
Maxi Roux was added to our Honorary Life members.
In November, along with Erika, I went with Louis to Bloemfontein again to deliver the Vrouemonument Lace and Wreath to the war museum. It is now part of the museum’s permanent collection.
In 2014 came another exhibition at Roosevelt Park before Louis had to resign as chairman.
2015 - 2016 Now we get to me and so far we have exhibited and demonstrated at the In2crafts Expo at Emporers Palace and our membership is increasing again
THE SPECIAL PEOPLE WHO HAVE CHAIRED OUR GUILD by Janis Savage
1980 – 1983 Jean Horne started our guild in 1980, with a dozen members, after teaching tatting and then bobbin lace at the adult education centre in St Andrews Road, Parktown. Her classes there soon got too big for the facilities available so along with Ine Meereboer, she started this guild here at the Roosevelt Park Recreation Centre, It seemed natural to call us the Witwatersrand Lace Guild as the Witwatersrand Embroidery Guild, which she was also instrumental in starting, also met here and still does.
I arrived in South Africa in the middle of 1979 and, before leaving England, got Jean’s name and address from the English Lace Guild. After a couple of months I plucked up the courage to find Jean’s home and I knocked on the door (which you could do in those days ), and introduced myself. She welcomed me with open arms and here I am 35 years later, having joined the Embroidery guild and the Lace guild as one of the original members.
In January 1982 she wrote the very first Lace Chatter (a one page letter). and in the May we had the first Lace Picnic. The local membership at that time was 25 as well as a number of overseas members. By June 1982, the membership had grown to 80. This necessitated an increase in the membership fee to R5.00 and a larger Lace Chatter. Jean continued to write the Lace Chatter until the end of 1986 and for many more years.she generously shared her knowledge with us, with workshops and information, More about Jean later.
1984 – 1985 Lynda Brophy took over from Jean. Unfortunately I was unable to contact her but researched her term with the help of old Lace Chatters.
In 1984 we held our first proper Lace Day with a speaker and workshops as well as lace on display and bobbins etc for sale. For the first time too, lace was included in the Rand Easter Show where Jean won a silver medal. The Cape Show, the Pretoria show and the Royal show in PMG also included lace and as far as I know, the Cape and PMG still do. We held exhibitions at the Braamfontein Hotel, the Old Market Museum, the Bernberg museum, Melrose House Pretoria and Abany Museum in Grahamstown. In 1985 we moved our meetings to an unused garage at the Bernberg museum and gave it the name of the Pin Inn. We had many happy meetings there.
1986 – 1987 Next came Mary Hughes. 1986 was Johannesburg’s centenary year. And we started that year with a local membership of 180 and overseas members. South African lace was also mentioned in many overseas lace magazines. Our guild made a group entry for the Rand Show commemorating the centenary, It was a cushion with a protea design on it, each segment made by different members. This was exhibited at the UK OIDFA congress in Brighton and was included in the English Lace Exhibition which toured the country. We exhibited at many places and had 2 REAL lace picnics at Emmarentia Dam. We also appeared on TV3 with children from a programme “Mpha tla la tsane” in Sotho which we could not understand but the children enjoyed themselved.
Mary told me that at the end of her term, she had to be secretary, editor of the Lace Chatter and treasurer as well as being chairlady, due to committee members resigning for various reasons. Well done Mary.
1988 – 1989 Myrna Fandam. During Myrna’s term a competition was held to design a logo for our guild. The winning design came from Alison Griffiths, a future chairlady of the guild, and you can see it on our birthday cake. In 1988 our group entry to the Rand Show of butterflies was awarded a first prize,
Also at the Rand Show, the President of the Belgian Kantcentrum brought lace to exhibit and brought 3 expert lacemakers with him to demonstrate. Myrna invited them to her home afterwards and we had a wonderful day there. I remember watching the lacemakers making petals and square tallies the Belgian way, for ever, until I had imprinted it on my mind. We also had the first visit by Yvonne Scheele who gave a beginners course on Withof lace. While she was here, a small group of us, including Yvonne drove to Kwazulu Natal to teach bobbin lace to members of the Mothers Union of Zululand. It was a wonderful experience but not many of them continued to make lace.
Another significant event in 1990 was the discovey of Lady Florence Phillips lace collection in the store room of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Jennifer Erasmus was reading the Lady Phillips biography and it kept on mentioning her lace collection which she donated to the new Art Gallery, so after many telephone calls Jennifer managed to locate it at the Art Gallery and a group of us went to view it in boxes in the storeroom.
Later a small group of members led by Jean Horne and Alison Griffiths took it upon themselves to sort, clean and catalogue the lace ready for it’s permanent home in specially made display cases in the new auditorium at the Gallery.
In 1989 we move our meetings to Parktown North Methodist Church. We were invited to exhibit and demonstrate at King David’s school in Victory Park and Myrna and Lynda Brophy appeared on TV explaining how lace was made.
1990 – 1991 Carolyn Einhorn became our next chairlady and at the beginning of September we made a trip to Koppies to visit the place where the first lace school was established. The Free State lacemakers had put on an exhibition and Jean Horne made a speech on the heritage and future of hand made lace. In the afternoon we visited the Koppies Old Age Home where the Koppies Lace is preserved, and listened to a talk by Mrs R de Wet, who had been a pupil at the lace school when a young girl.
Then in the same month the 'LACE 10' exhibition was held at Roedean School for 2 days before being moved to Melrose House for a further 2 months. September was a very busy month that year as, later in the month, a group went off to Ermelo to demonstrate at the wool festival where we were in a very hot and dusty shed next to the sheep sheering competition.
In October 1990 Yvonne Scheele made her second trip here to teach more Withof Lace.
1991 started with the First South African Lace Convention at Sunnyside Guest Farm at Clarens, organised by Jean Horne. It was a great success with lacemakers coming from all over the country and a great time was had by all. During the week we had 2 lace courses, talk on a variety of topics, social evenings and an outing to Qwa Qwa.
We had another picnic outing. This time to Rina Steyns’s farm in Ermelo where we were given a sheep sheering demonstration by Oom Dirk
1992 Alison Grifiths only served for one year as during October 1992 she gave birth to her daughter Emma, but she made up for it later.
Jean organised another lace convention at Clarens. It was another great success but afterwards Jean felt she could no longer commit herself to so much work to organise another one. So we had to wait until 2012 before another convention was held, but we had a lot of fun in the meantime.
During this year we had our usual happy times and we had the first of our exhibitions at the Floreum at Emmarentia Dam. Alison had also been busy for 4 years classifying Lady Phillips lace collection and writing the catalogue. This was ready for the official opening of the Lady Phillips Lace Collection at the Jhb Art Gallery on May 20th 1993 and we had our lace meeting at the Art Gallery on May 23rd 1993.
1993 – 1994 Helen Grant is unable to be here as she now lives in George where she started the Outeniqua Lace Guild. She sent a greeting message to us. When she became our chairlady, the guild moved it’s meetings again. This time to The Floreum. In 1993, the guild was invited to exhibit and demonstrate lacemaking at the Grahamstown Festival. Guild members offered their special pieces to exhibit (as they usually do) and I got the task of taking it to Grahamstown for 2 weeks. The Lady Phillips lace.collection was taken there too and there was a lot of interest in it and in our lace. I was also filmed for Transkei TV.
The picnics we had were an Easter Bonnet picnic and a Teddy Bear’s picnic, donating the teddy bears to charity. In May 1994 we had a fashion show in Helen’s garden where we all wore our lace. In September we had a picnic at The Lace Place and Helen managed to borrow the . Battle of Britain lace panel from the SA National Museum of Military History. Aletta Penning made some repairs to it and for those of you who know my house, it was hung from the upstairs balcony into the lounge. This will never be able to happen again.
1995 – 1996 Margaret Jackson became our chairlady and she organised a lot of workshops to increase our knowledge of lace and even designed prickings to challenge us. Floral Bucks lace expert Sandra Straughair visited us from England and gave a course on Floral Bucks. All organised by Jean Horne and most of the participants discovered that they could do a lot more than they thought they could. I started my Miss Channers Mat, the pricking of which I had had for several years and did not know where to start.
With Sandra’a help I had made one flower by the time she left and about 4 years later, I had finished it. Together with Mary, Margaret taught bobbin lace to girls between 8 and 12 years years at St Katherine’s school. She started the sales table to raise funds for the guild as membership had been gradually falling fom it’s early high and we needed funds for the library. She also started the guild on giving to charity once a year. Her term ended with another successful exhibition at the Floreum.
1997 – 1998 saw Alison Griffiths taking on another term as chairlady. Amongst many interesting meetings and workshops one of my favourite memories was doing the Lace Dance in Helen Grant’s garden. I had been sent a video of the traditional lace dance in Finland after an OIDFA Congress in Finland and we decided to have a go ourselves. It is a bit like a maypole dance. A roseground pricking was marked out on Helen’s lawn and various lacemakers were delegated to be bobbins and hold the ribbon. Other lacemakers were delegated to hammer the pins or pegs into the ground. Well, the over and under of cross left over right and twist right over left were a sight to behold as we danced around each other. The runners, who had to put in the pins, had amazing patience, waiting for each tangle to be sorted out so that they could run up and hammer in a peg and we all laughed until we cried, but we did eventually finish the small pricking. The lunch after that was most welcome. We had a worsmonay instead of hogmanay at the January meeting when Rhoda Booyens piped in the boerewors. The March picnic was held at Manie’s beautiful home in Heidelberg. Yvonne Scheele visited again to see how her Withof pupils were getting on – not very well without her.
The first December Play Day meeting was held in Alison’s term for those of us who do not go away in December as well as the Bring and Share concept. Before that, the committee always made the eats. I think the committee was younger in those day. 1998 ended with the guild’s Biennial Lace Exhibition at the Floreum
1999 – 2000 After serving on the guild’s committee as treasurer, Tina du Plooy took on the job of chairlady. The first picnic we had was another fun one, with the Nags & Fillies Races, organised by Helen Grant. Lacemakers were divided into 2 teams, each one nominating one or more lacemaker to make the lace on the same torchon pricking. The others helped her by putting in the pins or rewinding bobbins and bets were laid on which team could finish the lace first. I don’t remember who won but you should have heard the shouting of encouragement and the cheers of the winners.
A lot of workshops were organised during Tina;s term and we demonstrated at as many occasions that we could including the Miniature Enthusiasts Trading Fair where there was so much interest in lace for the dolls houses, that Tina decided we should make one of our own. Sue Engall from the Miniatures Society made the Lace Maker’s Cottage and everyone made a piece of lace for it but it is sadly now missing.
We also had a picnic at the Sammy Marks museum at Bronkhorstspruit.A series of guild calendars started to be produced in 1999, and in 2000, we had our first picnic at Catherine Love’s Victorian house in Auckland Park where Yvonne Scheele gave a talk on Lace from around the world.
A bumper Commemorative Lace Chatter was produced to coincide with the 20th Anniversary exhibition..Tina also started our 3 metre club for our members who like to make metres of lace. A number of members have certificates to commemorate their 3 metres.
2001 – 2004 Renee Michas then became chairlady and served for 4 years. Renee had us dabbling in other crafts as well as lacemaking. We made Vicorian Cards and beaded Christmas angels but we also made lace crocodiles, butterflies and angels as well,
Due to several robberies at the Floreum, it was decided in 1992 to move our meetings back to our original home, Roosevelt Park Recreation centre and we joined our exhibition with the Witwatersrand Embroidery Guild for the first time. A new lace guild banner was made for this first exhibition with members each making a letter of the name.
In 2004 the guild demonstrated at Hobbyex for the first time. In recent years it has become too expensive.
2005 – 2008 Annette Emdon took over from Renee and also served for 4 years. She also started us on other crafts as well as lace. We made felt mice and beaded South African flag spangles and French beaded Roses. We also made lace Christmas Decorations, owls, spiders and easter eggs and the members of the 3 metre club donated their lace edgings to be made into tea showers to be sold at the exhibitions. Mary taught us how to sew our lace onto fabric and Linda talked to us about wire lace.
Members of the guild donated pins and thread for Louis Booyens to take to India for the lacemakers at the convent of the Church of our Lady at Pallaruthi Bridge inSouthern India. Unfortunately the lace and embroidery school at the convent had been closed down, but he donated the supplies to the remaining lacemakers. The lace exhibitions continue to be shared with the Embroidery Guild and it is a good partnership.
2009 – 2010 Next, Lindsay Roper took her turn as chairlady. In preparation for the 2010 exhibition, we made torchon squares for a tablecloth to be raffled at the exhibition. We also had a workshop on making lace hats. A few were ready for the exhibition. Members of the Tuesday group made green lace to decorate Gayle Hardy’s wedding. Very effective. The 2010 exhibition was our 30th anniversary and another bumper Lace Chatter was produced, where many members were asked to write about how they o started to learn lacemaking. Another successful exhibition was held.
2011 – 2014 Louis Oosthuizen became our first chairman in 2011 and his big mission was to organise the 3rd National Lace Convention in 2012 at Bloemfontein and what a good job he made of it. He also conned me into making the Vroemonument in lace for the monuments centenary in 2013.
Before all that could happen though there were a few other happenings at the guild. Margaret Jackson and Mary Hughes, being our oldest members, were made Honorary Life Members for their services to the guild.
Carolyn held a 30th birthday party for the guild members at her home. We had a very successful exhibition and demonstration at the Flower and Lace Festival held at Villa Arcadia in September 2011.
In 2012 we learned to make Chaotic Lace – deliberately chaotic, that is. And then it was time for the 2012 lace Exhibition at Roosevelt Park with the Embroidery guild where lacemakers pulled out all the stops as usual.
Straight after this exhibition, it was time to pack up all the lace and head off to Bloemfontein for the convention held in October. Well Louis. it all came together on the day and every day that week. The Lace exhibited was breathtaking, the workshops for beginners and Milanese Lace were extremely well done. The talks and wreathlaying ceremony and all the other activities went off without a hitch and you must be congratulated for all the hard work that you put into it. From those beginners, Bloemfontein now has a thriving lace community as well. Sadly another convention in 2013 did not take place but we had a lovely lace picnic day at Koppies in April.
Later in 2013 we demonstrated at the International Quilt Festival at Emporers Palace, at the Naaldekoker Embroidery Exhibition at the Portuguese Old Age Home and at Hobbyex.
Maxi Roux was added to our Honorary Life members.
In November, along with Erika, I went with Louis to Bloemfontein again to deliver the Vrouemonument Lace and Wreath to the war museum. It is now part of the museum’s permanent collection.
In 2014 came another exhibition at Roosevelt Park before Louis had to resign as chairman.
2015 - 2016 Now we get to me and so far we have exhibited and demonstrated at the In2crafts Expo at Emporers Palace and our membership is increasing again