Lace: Hand-made vs. Machine-Made

Because of the Royal Wedding and Kate Middleton's dress, I have been featuring examples of Carrickmacross lace on my website. This is the style of lace on Kate Middleton's dress.

This morning I began a journey of study when I posted closeups of hand-made Carrickmacross and machine-made Carrickmacross. I have posted arrows noting certain areas where the stitches are easier to see and If you look carefully at them you will begin to recognize stitches made by hand vs. stitches made by machine.

To see the closeups go to www.GayAnnRogers.com, click on Lace Box, then on Lace Box 8.


Why learn about this? If you like to shop in flea markets and you go armed with a bit of knowledge, you are likely to find some real treasures for a few pennies. Many dealers buy quantity of laces, but many of them don't know the difference between hand and machine.

For example, at Covent Garden market in London, I once bought 3 strips of lace for the equivalent of $2.50 for the three. I bought them as samples to illustrate hand vs. machine in my needlework classes and they were great for that. Two were machine-made, but the third one was a great little strip of hand-made Venetian lace.

Besides studying them, what else can you do with these things? In the next couple of years I hope to figure out ways to incorporate bits of lace into some needlepoint patterns. In the meantime I am hoping my followers will learn a tad bit about the lace they may one day incorporate into their needlework,

Gay Ann