Bear in Mind An electronic newsletter from Bear Threads Ltd. Volume 6 – Issue 4 April 2014 From The Editor – We welcome Londa Rohlfing back as our guest this month. As shop owners, soon you will be able to take a step back Many of you sew for yourselves as well as children and and breathe from the busy winter sewing season. And for this article will be a big help to you. Honestly, I have sewn you designers and seamstresses, I hope you are comfortable all my life, and have never mastered putting in a zipper. with finishing the last touches of your Easter garments. The Londa makes it all sound so simple and I am anxious to try calendar has graced us with a long sewing season, for her step by step method. which we are all grateful. From all of us here at Bear Threads, we hope you have a Bear Threads has been busy as well. Not only have we wonderful and Blessed Easter and I would like to leave you raced to keep the shops stocked with all manner of goodies, with the following quote: but we acquired the inventory from the owners of a company wishing to close. We have a huge inventory of “The happiest people do not have the best of everything, Maline laces that everyone loves – and at 30% off! The They just make the best of everything they have.” sale price applies to only those patterns gained in the Author Unknown acquisition, but all patterns are available at the regular price. NOW is the time to check your inventory, and for Happy Stitching, those patterns you sell often, STOCK UP at the sale prices. Also, in the collection were silk fabrics, Irish linen, Swiss batiste and Valenciennes laces. Please call for more Sheila information. Inventory Acquisition Maline laces are some of the most beautiful laces available today. With our recent acquisition, we are able to offer many at a 30% discount from regular price. Availability varies. Also included in the collection were fabrics and French Valenciennes laces. Call for more information. shape. On this background the design was embroidered using a darning stitch. In Buratto the background appeared similar, but it was woven, so A Study of Lace that its production was much faster. Many of us today have older pieces that we know as net darning. Net darning and tulle embroidery is still Part III done today. Let us this month begin looking at the 4 main types of 2. Needlepoint Laces lace. As I said at the beginning of our study, many types of embroidery and needlework can be included in the broad Now you can begin to see how needlepoint laces spectrum of ‘lace’. However, our study will narrow that evolved from embroidered laces, as the spectrum to some specific types, although I will fundamental unit of all needlepoint laces is also occasionally insert where other ‘laces’ might be placed. the buttonhole stitch. Therefore, the basic appearance of needlepoint laces resembles 1. Embroidered Laces embroidery. The earliest needlepoint laces are reticella and punto in aria. Both are geometric Cutwork – In the sixteenth century, cutwork was and made up of squares and circles. done throughout Europe, as it is still done today, under the family of Whitework. It is easy to In making needlepoint lace, the pattern is drawn identify because it consists of holes cut into the on a strip of parchment, with outlining threads fabric and then embroidered around, most often tacked down along the edges of the design. The in white thread. Sometimes the holes were spaces between them are filled with buttonhole crossed with bars or partially filled with other stitches. When this work is complete the linking designs. The predominant stitches were the brides are put in to hold the toile together. Finally buttonhole and ‘oversewing’ which we would call the tacking threads are cut, and the lace is whipped or satin stitch. Older pieces of cutwork removed from the parchment, which can then be may be identified by the frequent joins in the used again. fabric threads, since only short lengths of flax could be handspun and hand woven at any one Reticella – Reticella is basically a filling in of a hole time. Today Madeira and Broderie anglaise of the made in the linen material by the extensive mid nineteenth century are derivatives of this type removal of threads to form a frame between a half of lace. and three inches square. Within this space threads were first traversed diagonally, and then filled to a Drawn and Pulled Threadwork – In technique, greater or lesser extent by row upon row of closely little has changed from the manner it was originally worked buttonhole stitches to form a solid-looking executed, and how it stitched today. In drawn design. In identifying reticella, look for the square threadwork some of the threads are removed and units, diagonals and the buttonhole stitch itself. in pulled work they are pulled together and bound with needle and thread. One of the main Punto in Aria - Simply an edging of buttonholes derivatives of this type of lace was the Dresden worked in various patterns; it has no connection work, from Denmark and Germany in the late with the fabric it is decorating as in the reticella. It seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the early is often confused with Genoese bobbin lace which nineteenth century this type of work was is, in fact, an imitation of Punto in Aria! deteriorating on the continent, but it continued to flourish in the United Kingdom in a modified English Needlepoint - Hollie Point form known as Ayrshire work. This is generally regarded as an English lace and it Filet and Buratto – Both of these date from early is mentioned here only because of the geometric times. Filet consisted of a hand-knotted appearance of the design, and because of the background similar to fishing net. The meshes technique, which differed from that of the other were usually square, but occasionally diamond in needlepoint laces. It was a very flat lace made in a continuous strip rather like a tape or ribbon. Neat Alencon - The lace, Alencon, not to be confused straight rows of tiny buttonhole stitches were with the city, was scarcely distinguishable as a worked from one side of the strip to the other, and separate lace until in 1717, when it developed a the design was formed by a regular spacing of the characteristic reseau consisting of looped stitches stitches so that gaps were left like small pinholes, twisted around with thread. Another much and eventually from these pinholes religious debated characteristic was the horsehair used to characters would appear in outline and detail like a pad the stiffly raised cordonnet and covered firmly pinwork picture. with buttonhole stitches. Some say horsehair was never used, only human hair, while others say, All of the remaining needlepoint laces, no matter indeed, the sharp ends of the horsehair protruded the country of origin were non-geometric, but were and tended to catch in the reseau and damage it. made in the same general way. That means the We do know that in the later eighteenth century, motifs, whether they were flowers, people or the Alencon and Argentan laces distinguished by animals, were worked as separate units, and then their raised cordonnet, were used as winter laces arranged in accordance with the design and finally and the bobbin laces of Mechlin, Lille, Caen and linked by brides of various kinds or by a reseau. Spain were considered summer laces. Venetian and Spanish Needlepoints – Six distinct Belgium and Ireland also had their fingers in the types of Venetian lace were made from the early needlepoint lace making pie, but less was made in seventeenth century to the mid eighteenth century. Belgium or Flanders than Italy or France. Ireland Gros Point, Rose Point, and Point de Neige produced its’ share of bogus seventeenth-century consisted of elaborately raised floral or leafy Venetian raised point and flat point laces. Some encrustments. They are recognizable by their very was quite well done, however the quality of the fine flax thread with a silky gloss, heavily padded thread never approached the superlative fineness cordonnet, spided with picots and the broad of the earlier work in France and Italy. Ireland decorative brides. did, however have a needlepoint lace which was entirely its own. It was begun in 1846 when the Spanish Needlepoints closely mimicked Venetian, distress caused by the potato famine made some except for a couple of small points of design, that secondary occupations very needful. This lace was being of a type of caterpillar and of course the two- known as Youghal and the designs were mainly a headed imperial eagle. bold flowing arrangement of wild flowers, the petals shaded by varying the closeness of the French Needlepoints – Point de France stitches to each other. By about 1660, during the reign of Louis XIV, the The twentieth century saw Ireland, Belgium and sums of money spent by the French court on Hong Kong continuing to produce some Venetian laces had become so immense that a tablecloths and coverlets by hand, but with no series of laws were passed prohibiting the distinction between country of design, and no importation of foreign laces. They were, however, artistic merit. even less effective than the Acts of Parliament of Charles I and II of England. The native French Note from the writer: laces of that time were of poor quality and As mentioned from the start of this series, I unpopular leading to the initiation of the apologize for the lack of a complete description of development of a new lace center at Alencon in ALL types of embroidered or Needlepoint laces.