Because I get the digest form I can't respond directly, so must copy and
paste. Liz R wondered about a village in France where the old lacemakers
had all lost their eyesight - fact or fiction?. I'm just now re-reading
"Take the Children," and loss of eyesight due to poor light and general
poor
Congratulations, Alice in Oregon. I hope you are going to wear the lappets â
like you did, I seem to remember, some years ago at an IOLI Convention. I
think you wore different ones each day, from your collection.
I hope you can post a photo of your lappets for us to see â but Not on
Facebook-
Sorry, not Tafel 29 (Plate 29), but Figure 29 (Abb. 29), item b -- p. 119
of the PDF. And Levey's quote below refers to bobbin lace, which I've not
found an example of. The items I'm identifying as lace are needlelace.
On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 2:27 PM, N.A. Neff wrote:
> I think Levey might have
IÂ haven't seen this mentioned in the emails about fine linen thread. Â I
heard or read somewhere that the air pollution of the Industrial Revolution
had a cause on the flax plants and effected their growth. I am sure the first
world war also had a detrimental effect on the growing areas.JaniceÂ
Back in the 1980s there was a brief period when linen thread in 140/2 and
120/2 was available, but only for a few years. It has since disappeared.
Since 1980, when I started lace making, there hasn't been anything finer,
thinner. I don't know what the finest size threads were available for
antique
I have heard of old Mechlin being made with 240/2 linen thread.
Liz R, Raleigh NC
> Can anyone be more specific? What do you mean by "fine linen thread"?
>
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I think Levey might have overlooked something. The German text specifically
says that Tafel 29, item b, was done without a ground fabric.
Nancy
Connecticut, USA
On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 2:20 PM, Devon Thein wrote:
> ..."but for the remains of some fragments of the ground material, could be
>
Another interesting find is looping that looks like needle lace in the
prehistoric American Southwest. The article found here:
https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/pdf/pecos2008_webster.pdf has a
diagram on page 13 which could well be found in a needle lace book and
photos of bags on p. 14 in this
I looked at the document with photos of the archeological finds and the
Wordpress blog showing recreations. How beautiful. I know the Posament, as the
blogger calls them, isn’t needle lace but it’s very cool. Maybe I’m imagining
it but it reminded me of Celtic knots. Viking raids on Ireland
Very interesting pictures. While dreaming of Viking needlelace, don't forget
nalbinding, which is the Viking version of knitting, done with a needle and
thread. As presently constituted at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, at
least, it replaces knitting, but could conceivably be more lace
I have lately become obsessed with taking close-up photos of gros
point in my collection with my Iphone using the olloclip attachment
and a thin transparent millimeter measure that I wedge between the
olloclip and the lace. Yes, the 10,000 stitches per square inch is
something that is true, not a
Oh Elise! This is wonderful!!! Please post updates to Arachne as things
progress!
Nancy
Connecticut, USA
On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 12:40 PM, Elise Waber Hays
wrote:
> I posted about my interest in experimenting with different cultivars of
> flax to produce a fine linen thread in 2016. I guess it
Hi Jane,
Some of the pieces I have are made with linen thread as fine or finer than
180 cotton. The thread in one lappet is so fine that it is hard to see in
the cloth-stitch areas that it's made of thread at all.
I will try to upload a photo to Arachne on Flickr when I get home.
Nancy
I posted about my interest in experimenting with different cultivars of
flax to produce a fine linen thread in 2016. I guess it is time for an
update! By using a research facility, I was able to obtain seeds for 4
cultivars not commercially available; two from France, one from Belgium,
and one
Can anyone be more specific? What do you mean by "fine linen thread"?
I ask because lacemakers look at my work and say "isn't that fine!" when
I'm using 80 cotton. Which isn't fine at all. I would consider a fine
cotton to be about 160 to 180.
We used to get fine linen thread from Ireland
Dear Lyn,
again a bit late. In a certain time If I am right at the beginning of 20th
century a sort of Binche (with lots of tallies) was named Feen-Spitze -
fairy-lace.
Ilske
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Speaking of possible lace legends, I have long been curious about a fictional
account of a lace village in France where most of the older lace makers had
lost their sight. This was supposedly due to making lace for long hours in
poor light. However I have never seen anything about this in any
There's been a lot of really cool experimental archeology in the
re-enactment world looking at all the bits of the Birka find. Any textiles
those bits you're looking at were once attached to are long gone, and just
the metal is left.
Certainly the posaments are gorgeous when recreated. One
There has been some concerns expressed recently about the survival of Arachne
in view of other media outlets. I know of no other place where one can throw
out a technical question, whether on lace identification, or the demise of fine
linen threads and have the experts weigh in and give such
> On 30 Aug 2018, at 16:06, Devon Thein wrote:
>
> Previously, lacemaking machines were run on Jacquard technology in
> which the movement of the machine was directed by punched cards.
MYB Textiles in Ayrshire Scotland has updated 100-year old lace machines that
used punched cards so that
Hi Nancy,
This document is really interesting. It will take me a while to read it all
through. No wonder you are excited about this finding! Thanks a lot for
sharing!
Antje González, from Spain
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I have been following this thread about the loss of very fine flax with
interest.
I know that about ten years ago Bart & Francis in Belgium were looking into
the possibility of producing fine linen thread again, and Francis Busschaert
kindly sent me a sample of 130/2 NeL linen. His comments at
It has taken a concerted effort, in modern times, to set up seed banks, in
which seeds of strains no longer being grown or of species threatened with
extinction, are saved and protected. Seed isn't viable forever: these seed
banks have to maintain special conditions to store the seed. If I were an
Lyn,
I don't think the starvation in Belgium would have had anything to do with
it. If the relevant cultivars' extinction was caused by WWI in Flanders, it
would have been because of the abandonment of growing flax in the middle of
the turmoil of the war, combined with the destruction of the
In my studies of lace history, the old very-fine threads ceased being produced
about 1800. The cotton gin was invented about 1790. It let cotton be produced
in great quantity at a much cheaper price than fine linen. For comparison, if
a spool of cotton were $10, a spool of linen would be
It appears that the seeds from next years crop comes from this year's crop.
That being said, I cannot see a flax grower of the very fine flax not saving
some of those seeds. Or losing all those cultivars. And while Belgium was
certainly bombed to death in places during WWI, such as Iepres,
Alex Stillwell has stated that the reason for the demise of the really fine
lace thread is that the spinning machines can't accept the long filaments the
way handspinners could. I went to the Texture museum in Kortrijk yesterday,
(in my opinion not as interesting as the old museum in the
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