Lace facts for kids

19th century lace

Csetneki Lace

Lace is a fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. Lace is very lightweight and open, and the patterns usually have many holes and frills.

Lace is made by knitting, crocheting and weaving.

Types

Square "Sampler," 1800-1825, Brooklyn Museum

There are many types of lace, classified by how they are made. These include:

• Needle lace, such as Venetian Gros Point, is made using a needle and thread. This is the most flexible of the lace-making arts. While some types can be made more quickly than the finest of bobbin laces, others are very time-consuming. Some purists regard needle lace as the height of lace-making. The finest antique needle laces were made from a very fine thread that is not manufactured today.
• Cutwork, or whitework, is lace constructed by removing threads from a woven background, and the remaining threads wrapped or filled with embroidery.
• Bobbin lace, as the name suggests, is made with bobbins and a pillow. The bobbins, turned from wood, bone, or plastic, hold threads which are woven together and held in place with pins stuck in the pattern on the pillow. The pillow contains straw, preferably oat straw or other materials such as sawdust, insulation styrofoam, or ethafoam. Also known as Bone-lace. Chantilly lace is a type of bobbin lace.
• Tape lace makes the tape in the lace as it is worked, or uses a machine- or hand-made textile strip formed into a design, then joined and embellished with needle or bobbin lace.
• Knotted lace includes macramé and tatting. Tatted lace is made with a shuttle or a tatting needle.
• Crocheted lace includes Irish crochet, pineapple crochet, and filet crochet.
• Knitted lace includes Shetland lace, such as the "wedding ring shawl", a lace shawl so fine that it can be pulled through a wedding ring.
• Machine-made lace is any style of lace created or replicated using mechanical means.
• Chemical lace: the stitching area is stitched with embroidery threads that form a continuous motif. Afterwards, the stitching areas are removed and only the embroidery remains. The stitching ground is made of a water-soluble or non-heat-resistant material.

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  Needle lace, showing button hole stitch

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  Bobbin lace made on a pillow with bobbins and pins

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  Broderie anglaise, a type of cutwork

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  Filet lace, embroidered on an existing net

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  Lace knitting

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  Tatting, with shuttle

Images for kids

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  Valuable old lace, cut and framed for sale in Bruges, Belgium

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  Unknown Holland painter, Portrait of woman, 17th century, National Gallery of Armenia

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  Early lace on a fragment of The Virgin and Child by Hans Memling.

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  Portrait of an Unknown Lady. Florentine School, 1571. National Trust.

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  Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman in Brown with a Lace Collar by Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723)

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  Portrait of Nicolaes Hasselaer by Frans Hals, c. 1627. Rijksmuseum.

See also

In Spanish: Encaje para niños