Blocking a lace shawl took me 4 hours longer than I planned

I started blocking my first lace shawl last Saturday and thought it'd be a quick 2 hour job. But the pins I had were too short to hold the edges open properly (like, barely an inch long). I ended up running to three different craft stores before I found long T-pins that actually worked at a Joann's 20 minutes away. Then I had to re-pin the whole thing because the points weren't sharp enough and kept slipping out of the foam mats. It took me until 9pm to finish, and my hands were cramping up something fierce. Has anyone else run into pin problems when blocking big projects?

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price.tyler1mo ago

My wooden blocking wires bent out of shape after three uses (so frustrating).

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hill.hugo1mo ago

Oh man, I feel your pain. I had the exact same issue with short pins on my first big shawl - they just wouldn't hold the lace open at the edges. What finally worked for me was switching to those extra long stainless steel T-pins, the ones that are like 2 inches long and come in a big pack. @price.tyler, I actually had better luck with those than with blocking wires since they don't bend at all. Also, I started wet blocking instead of steam blocking and that made the pins grab way better into the mats.

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