I’m also thinking about how lace was traded - lacemakers were paid by the length they made, and they didn’t make 50 yards of it in one long length the way machines do. It was cut off when the tally-man came, so all lace would be in fairly short pieces - of varying lengths. Looking at the voluminous dresses of the 1700s and 1800s, I’m sure it would have been a perfectly normal thing to have lace that was pieced together from several shorter pieces.
Since the advent of machine-made things, we have become very nice about how perfect things must be, but that’s just us taking our cue from what machines can do. Back before machines, there was a much greater tolerance for variation, and mistakes, in hand-crafts of all kinds. Having visible ends isn’t even a mistake - it’s a normal part of the manufacturing and trading process. Adele West Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) > On Jan 31, 2019, at 4:31 AM, Jane Partridge <mous...@live.co.uk> wrote: > > We tend to start patterns one at a time, winding bobbins particularly for > that pattern, and when we've done whatever length we want to work, be it for > a sample or for a particular project (which may or not hide the ends in > seams) we finish it off neatly and secure all ends with knots or whatever. > > "Back in the day" they wouldn't have had time for such luxuries. Lace would > be on the pillow, with a pattern started once - ages ago - with a length of > completed lace cut off (literally, with scissors, as we would cut a length > from a card of machine-made lace now) when the tally-man came to collect the > lace and pay the cottage worker making it, leaving ends at the "start" not > even in rolls, and the lace on the pillow continuing. > > How we hang in or finish off our lace has little relevance to those days, > when lace was made and time wasted meant less bread on the table. > > Jane Partridge - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
