Featured Lace lesson #5 - Handmade needle lace vs. Machine made needle lace

I'll continue lessons here - unless you'd like me to quit... just say; I won't be offended.

I'm not going to get into what "kind" of needle lace this is; I'm just going to identify both as "needle lace".

Front side - machine made


Front side - hand made
These laces have roughly the same size design elements - so I thought it was a good comparison. The design elements are very similar Both pieces have a very solid appearance to the petals and leaves and the flower centers have some openwork areas. There are connecting bars with picots to hold the design elements together. They both have "raised work".

Back side - machine made



Back side - hand made



The differences between the machine made example and the handmade example, are more profound when looking at the back side.

The machine made piece looks very much the same on both sides. As with other machine made lace examples - it has a very "garbled" or fuzzy appearance. The raised work is still pronounced on the back side (only the stitch on the backside looks slightly different than the front).

The handmade piece, however, looks markedly different. Probably the most notable observation is that the raised work along the edges of the design elements are missing. Hand raised work would only be applied to one side.

In addition; the stitches are crisp and clear, not garbled and split. It is also fairly easy to note where the threads for the connection bars leave one design element and are absorbed (or flow into) the next design element.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson. As before, if you have any questions; please ask.
Have a great day.

Leslie

 

Please don't stop! These are great informative posts

 

Lovely! I'm glad you are enjoying them!
Leslie

 

If you had shown those two pictures and asked which was which, I'd have guessed that it was the second example that was machine made just because the work seems consistently more dense than the first.

 

Interesting!
Correctly identifying machine from handmade is certainly a challenge on many levels... once you can "see" what you are suppose to be looking for; it becomes easier.

After learning how to tell the difference; then the challenge is to tell one style of lace apart from another... Bucks, Beds, Maltese, Chantilly, Point de Gaze, Milanese, etc... the list is endless...and harder!

Leslie

 

I would have guessed wrong too. Thanks for sharing and informing us.