Buttonhole stitches in needle lace

Buttonhole stitches are so versatile - they are the basis of needle lace and are also used in white work, embroidery and general sewing. It never fails to amaze me how a skein of thread can be turned into the most delicate needle lace using the humble buttonhole stitch. Therese de Dillmont in her Encyclopedia of needlework explains how to execute the stitch in her section on plain sewing and describes many variations on the basic stitch in her chapter on needle-made laces. She shows how to make joining bars with picots and longer branched bars with double buttonhole stitches to form a more rigid structure. She also describes how to make various ground stitches using more open loosely formed buttonhole stitches, which she calls Brussels stitch. In total, she describes 40 needle lace stitches all based on the same buttonhole stitch model. The image shows a detail of some needle lace showing an open Brussels stitch, another worked over a guiding thread, and open stitches over a gimp composed of several threads forming joining bars. All made using the simple buttonhole stitch!