Is the webbing to which the leaves and flowers are attached formed by picking out the threads from the main cloth? Or is the webbing made separately and then attached to the main cloth?
This is amazing. I have some cutwork of my grandmother's and she was a made crocheter but I haven't seen anything this elaborate.
I wish I knew how it was done! Did you click through the link? This one just says "Irish lace crochet, c. 1850 detail," which suggests to me that the motifs are crocheted separately, then attached by the long threads that contain little Cluny knots halfway along their lengths.
The link has some other amazing that were done I don't know how. Some of it is described as "needle lace."
A lot of what the linked article shows is what I think of as crocheting rather than lace - without necessarily being able to explain the difference. I poked around a very little bit and found this - I don't understand everything in it but it's interesting:
One thing the author says more than once is that people loved and valued Irish crochet "lace" for itself rather than just because it's faster than tatting.
I don't tat, but I can see from watching tatters work that there are effects you can achieve with tatting that you can't easily get with crochet. A typical crochet project is all one thread, so the design has to allow you somehow to get from one end to the other as if you were an ant crawling. Tatters use multiple threads, connected by knots and windings that you can't do by hooking stitches serially into previous stitches. Irish lace is an exception, because you make each little motif separately, then connect them with the netting. That allows a much freer lace pattern, at the cost of constantly cutting and working in the edges of all the stray ends of thread.
I don't knit, either, so I don't fully understand why knitting allows such a variety of textures that mostly can't be replicated by crochet.
As for what qualifies as "lace," I think anything decorative in an "open weblike pattern" qualifies. Until crochet lace came along, all lace tended to be patterns worked on some kind of netting, in two general categories, "needle" and "bobbin." Needle lace is a little like sewing embroidery stitches onto a reticulated background web of some kind. Bobbin lace works on a similar netted background, but is a little more like braiding or knotting. Crochet lace can also achieve a decorative open weblike pattern, but substitutes stitches hooked side by side for the kind of spirals and knots you can achieve with needles and bobbins.
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Is the webbing to which the leaves and flowers are attached formed by picking out the threads from the main cloth? Or is the webbing made separately and then attached to the main cloth?
This is amazing. I have some cutwork of my grandmother's and she was a made crocheter but I haven't seen anything this elaborate.
Thanks, Tex.
Sigh. "Mad" crocheter, not "made". There was no requirement that she crochet someone to death to join the family.
I wish I knew how it was done! Did you click through the link? This one just says "Irish lace crochet, c. 1850 detail," which suggests to me that the motifs are crocheted separately, then attached by the long threads that contain little Cluny knots halfway along their lengths.
The link has some other amazing that were done I don't know how. Some of it is described as "needle lace."
A lot of what the linked article shows is what I think of as crocheting rather than lace - without necessarily being able to explain the difference. I poked around a very little bit and found this - I don't understand everything in it but it's interesting:
https://ldslacemaker.com/2014/05/01/tatting-vs-crochet/
One thing the author says more than once is that people loved and valued Irish crochet "lace" for itself rather than just because it's faster than tatting.
I don't tat, but I can see from watching tatters work that there are effects you can achieve with tatting that you can't easily get with crochet. A typical crochet project is all one thread, so the design has to allow you somehow to get from one end to the other as if you were an ant crawling. Tatters use multiple threads, connected by knots and windings that you can't do by hooking stitches serially into previous stitches. Irish lace is an exception, because you make each little motif separately, then connect them with the netting. That allows a much freer lace pattern, at the cost of constantly cutting and working in the edges of all the stray ends of thread.
I don't knit, either, so I don't fully understand why knitting allows such a variety of textures that mostly can't be replicated by crochet.
As for what qualifies as "lace," I think anything decorative in an "open weblike pattern" qualifies. Until crochet lace came along, all lace tended to be patterns worked on some kind of netting, in two general categories, "needle" and "bobbin." Needle lace is a little like sewing embroidery stitches onto a reticulated background web of some kind. Bobbin lace works on a similar netted background, but is a little more like braiding or knotting. Crochet lace can also achieve a decorative open weblike pattern, but substitutes stitches hooked side by side for the kind of spirals and knots you can achieve with needles and bobbins.
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