Our Tutors

Biographies of our Tutors for the 2025 Edinburgh Lace Course

Frances Bell

Frances Bell

Frances has been making lace since 1967. In 1984 she began teaching for Adult Education in East Yorkshire having achieved the City and Guild’s lace making certificate. She has attended courses in Brugge with Anne Marie and Marie Anne, enjoying the Continental laces. She is a tutor for the York summer school and Edinburgh lace course plus weekend courses at Wydale and South Lakes.

Frances enjoyed teaching both English and Continental laces.

Diana Blackburn

Diana Blackburn

Diana started lacemaking in the early 1980s and has now been teaching for 32 years. With wonderful teachers in the south of England she learned English and Flemish laces. Diana visited Brugge for over 20 years learning from the wonderful teachers from the Kantcentrum. While a service wife in Lossiemouth, she taught and set up Moray Lacemakers, followed by a move to Northumberland.

Diana is a medal and section winner in the Lace Guild’s competition for Bucks 3 times. She regularly demonstrates and promotes lacemaking and has been Chair of Northumbria lacemakers. She currently has students aged from 10 to 90 years old and still loves every aspect of the craft which has become such a major part of her life.

Claire Bonito

Claire Bonito

Claire has been making bobbin lace since 1993, learning her craft initially under Pat Read MBE and later Jacquie Tinch. After gaining a good grounding in Torchon, Bedfordshire and Bucks Point laces she moved on to Milanese Lace and developed a real love for this style, as well as a flair for designing. Claire has developed her own recognisable signature contemporary style.

She has achieved a City and Guilds Certificate in Creative Lacemaking and has a Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector. Claire has been teaching lace since the mid 2000s and does so in a range of settings across the UK as well as regular online classes for The Lace Museum based in California and now an annual lace retreat in Southern Spain. She quickly gained a reputation for her open and easy manner and for being an excellent communicator with all levels of lacemaker, her classes and courses are always popular.

Claire has created an impressive collection of lace designs. The majority are worked in Modern Milanese using a selection of Milanese and Withof techniques, there is also a smaller selection of primarily Torchon designs. All her designs are available to purchase online from www.roseground.com

Some of Claire’s designs are backed up with a range of YouTube videos on her “Bonitocrafts” channel

Kitty Mason

Kitty is a bobbin lace maker and teacher of lace, living in Edinburgh. Her background is in traditional lacemaking. Having learned on the English laces she then progressed to some of the Belgian laces and over more than 20 years has travelled regularly to Brugge for classes with Anne Marie Verbeke where she has also learned to interpret old patterns and design new ones. She particularly enjoys teaching Flanders lace and Binche lace.

However alongside her love of Binche lace she believes that lace should not always be white and flat and in her contemporary work loves to use colour, texture and some unusual materials. Using whatever techniques will achieve the desired effect Kitty uses many traditional techniques but also freer use of the threads. She enjoys the challenge of contemporary lace and one of her joys is helping students to develop their own contemporary lace working from their own inspirations and helping them to free their thinking and experiment. Scary but exciting! She is a member of the Westhope Group.

Carole Smith

Carole Smith

Carole has been making lace since the age of ten and over the years has made a variety of bobbin laces. She has been taught by Kitty Mason and a number of tutors when they visited Aberdeen in the 1980s and 90s. Since 2001 Carole has been part of Kitty’s trip to Brugge to be taught by both Anne-Marie Verbeke-Billiet and Magda Mallise focussing on making and designing Flemish Laces.

In recent years, Carole has taught in Aberdeen, Inverness and Nairn and from 2014 has been a regular at the Edinburgh Lace Course. In recent years, Carole has been a tutor with Creative Experiences, with courses in France, Italy and Spain.