I've tried... 3 times I tried to upload pics of my own Chinese?
Needle-made? piece to my website, but, obviously, the 10 minute
refresher course (all my son could spare during his holiday visit)
wasn't enough :)
I have a shirt with a (sizeable - 9x5") triangular chest insert in it.
The lace in it could be a cousin or even a sister to Brenda's mat. I
love the shirt, but have always assumed the lace was machine-made. One
reason was: I bought it in Poland (in a shop called "Bombay", so
thought it was India-made <g>), for the equivalent of 1 dollar (US).
True, it had been on sale, but the original price had been still less
than $2. The Chinese may be able to subsist on a bowl of rice a day,
but I doubt even they can subsist on a single grain.
The second reason I always assumed the piece was machine made is the
lack of variety of stitches, especially fillings. Over time, we've seen
similiar pieces on E-Bay, now come Brenda's two and mine. And _all_ of
them are shaken off the same family tree: there's a "vine" (solid,
outlined - each side - by the buttonholed rows). There's half or whole
petal (or leaf), also "solid". Then there are the fillings -- all two
of them (three, if you're willing to accept the premise that the same
filling made in a smaller scale is a separate entity), in the other
half of the petal/leaf or else alternating with the solid
petals/leaves. And the buttonholed bars and outlines. China is a *huge*
country; how is it possible that all the Needle lacemakers there know
only 3-4 stitches/stitch combinations?
I don't know where Patty saw the picots; there are none in my piece,
none in either of the two on Brenda's site, and none in any of the
other semi-clones I'd seen. Several people referred to a piece owned by
Robin; by some puter vagary, I've not seen it.
I have never done any NL myself, so Aurelia's argument (suspicious
consistency of tension) never even occured to me. If it had, I might
have discounted it -- my mother could knit (as long as it was plain
knitting, no fancy stitches) better (more evenly) than any machine...
:) Nor, for the same reason (ignorance), can I say whether the fillings
are "typical" or not.
Yesterday, I took a linen tester to the piece. The outlines and the
connnecting bars are made with a continuously buttonholing stitch (some
of the joins -- mid bar -- are, indeed, quite hideous <g>). The
"fillings" and the "solid" parts also seem to be made with a continuous
thread, with fewer joins.
Joins by themselves are not an indicator of machine- vs hand- made;
when, at 14, my Mother went to work in the textile factory in Lodz, her
first job was that of a "runner"; she ran between weaving machines,
making knots in broken threads.
Due to ignorance of NL, I cannot tell whether or not any the following
is of any relevance as pointers:
1) The right side of the piece looks as it ought to; the buttonholed
areas (buttonholed over 2 threads of basic weight -- visible in places)
rise over the rest, whether as an outline to a motif, or in the
connecting bars. But, on the wrong side, the piece is as flat as a
pancake, and looks to be woven -- outline, "solid" and filling -- in
one motion.
2) On the wrong side: in a flower, there seems to be no break between
one petal and the next in some instances (and no trace of the
"couronne"); wheter the petal is all "solid", all "filling", or
half-and-half, the entire petal seems to be made by a single thread.
3) On the wrong side again: the above applies about 8 times out of 10.
Every flower seems to have at least one join (thicker line of stitches,
which mars the smooth-as-pancake line of vision); some have two, as if
an entire petal had been appliqued onto an existing structure.
4) (half of the magic number 8 <g>) For years and years we said that
the way to separate the chaff from the wheat in Filet Lace was the
presence or absence of knots where the ground-forming threads crossed;
a knot -- it's hand made; no knot -- it's an immitation. Only... It is
now apparent (see Fillet Lace by the Sea, advertised in the IOLI
Bulletin), that there _are_ machines perfectly capable of forming knots
(and at more perfect distances, too <g>), so _that_ criterion is out of
the window, and one needs to adjust one's thinking to match the
reality. Some of the "fillings" in my "Needle Lace" piece, BTW, seem to
use the same knot as that in the Fillet Lace net...
I now think that the connecting bars on my piece are made by hand, but
that everything else is made by a machine. Not
a-little-bit-by-a-little-bit, but a-large-element-by-a- large-element,
fully enclosed by, machine-made, "buttonholed" outlines. IOW, a
combination of machine and hand work, like Battenberg or Duchesse.
Maybe :)
Yours, uncharacteristically undecided,
T
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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