Hello all, I was so excited to get this find this past weekend while browsing through a flea market. We do our usual perusing through baskets full of lace at our usual haunts hoping to stock our lace supply for several projects we work on. Occasionally we run across some really nice samples and I use them for my display and keep them safe. This is just the case.
I believe this is a Bedfordshire style lace with leaf tallies over half stitch ground. The length of this edging is 54 inches. Really like this pattern! http://www.tat-man.net/bobbinburg/BLgallery/Rescued_Beds_tally_lace.jpg I believe this one is a Torchon style lace. The length of this edging is 42 inches. http://www.tat-man.net/bobbinburg/BLgallery/Rescued_Beds_scallop_lace.jpg Here is my assessment of the lace we found. I believe they are handmade because of the way the tallies are treated and there are loose ends. I do see some visible mistakes. The two ends of the laces are hand stitched over on itself, which makes me believe they were attached to some article and later removed. There are some offwhite course threads in the footside to justify this. It is very fragile. There were some loose threads in spots like the lacemaker forgot to trim or thread the ends in. So I tested one of those loose ends. It feels like a silk thread. It is 65 wraps per inch(25 wraps per cm). It easily breaks and when you roll the thread between the fingers it disintegrates into dust. Not good! So I have to take extra care when handling. The thread seems really dry to the touch. Best solution to help strengthen the lace??? Throw in the freezer??? Correct me if I am wrong on any parts of this review. I would like your opinions. I hope the pictures are large enough(hopefully not too large to download!) If you happen to recognize the patterns of these edgings that would be great! I do like the patterns a lot that I am considering drafting it out into a pricking. I have done this before. I use Adobe Illustrator and true up the angles so there aren't any inconsistences. If I do draft the patterns I would gladly share them. Of course if you happen to find the author of the patterns then that saves me the trouble ;) Glad I can share this with you! Mark, aka Tatman (who is going to go through his photos on his website and embed a watermark and state the copyright on them. LOTS OF WORK!) website: http://www.tat-man.net blog: http://tatmantats.wordpress.com - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
