This original design piece was awarded
First Prize and also Popular Vote at the
50th Anniversary IOLI convention in 2003. 
It is a Milanese design with rolled edges. 
 

Janice Blair's project spreads from a pink pillow. From a miniature forest of pins flow 160 threads connected to multicolored pencils spread in a fan-like pattern.
Blair, of Crystal Lake, is making lace. The pencils are called bobbins, and she manipulates them to create the intricate designs that have won her several awards.
"People say, 'How can you do this? It looks so complicated,' " Blair said. "But you only work with two bobbins at a time."
Plus, there are only two stitches, a cross or a twist. The pattern is based on where you place the pins and how many twists you make, Blair said. 
The heavier thread that holds the pattern is called "the gimp." The pattern is called a "pricking," so named because the pin holes are pricked in advance. "Having the pin hole already there helps you guide the pin in," Blair said.
The hobby does have hazards. "I break a lot of nails," she said.
Blair spent 250 hours working with 240 bobbins to make a fan filled with planets and stars that she jokingly named "Traversing the Silver Firmament." The fan won third place at last year's International Old Lacers Inc. convention in Indianapolis.
Blair is working on her entry for this year's convention, scheduled for August in Tulsa, Okla., but she doesn't want any rival lacers to know what it is. "It's deadly secret until July," she said.
Blair speaks with a soft English accent. She and her family once lived in Cleveland, England, and moved to America in 1981. 
Blair will return to England in July to exchange bobbins with other lacers - lacers exchange bobbins the way other people exchange business cards. Blair has a collection of bobbins from around the world. "Very generous people, lacemakers," she said.
But lacemaking is not a craft she brought from Europe. She started in 1994 for "the challenge of trying it" with a mail-order lacemaking kit. "It was a terrible kit," she said, "with plastic bobbins." But Blair didn't give up, and learned lacemaking from the book "Introduction to Bobbin Lace" by Rosemary Shepherd.
The book listed a lacemaking supplier in Des Plaines, so Blair visited the store. There she learned about local lace-making clubs such as Lace Makers and Collectors Exchange (L.A.C.E.) based in Downers Grove and Prairie Mill Lacemakers in Belvidere. She joined both groups.
Blair also is active among lacemaking groups on the Internet. Her husband, Malcolm, is a technical director for Steel Founders Society of America in Barrington, and travels the world frequently. Blair often goes with him. Beforehand she goes on the Internet to look up lacemakers in the country she will visit.
"I've met lacemakers in Denmark, France, Italy and New Zealand," she said. "I stayed with one in Canada. I mean, that's brave of me, to stay with someone I've never met."
Blair likes to work daytime in her family room, which is filled with natural light. Her two cats avoid the temptation of attacking her string-filled projects. "They never bother with it," she said. "I don't know why."
Blair said lace-making has become more than a hobby. "My husband's been waiting for me to work it through my system," she said. "I'll probably be doing lace until I can't see."