I’ve been studying some of my images of the original Battle
of Britain lace panel trying to determine the different stitches used in it.
The books on the panel say the lace is Swiss and combination and I’ve been
trying to find out what that means. Apparently, the Swiss guide bar is linked
to the bottom board threads, which are usually the second finest in the
machine. Lace samples I’ve seen labelled as Swiss include the V shaped
stitching seen in the photograph and it can vary in length and width depending on
how many threads it crosses or moves down per stitch. It can also be fine and close
together or thicker and more spaced out depending on the thread used to produce
it. The book I have about ‘Lace furnishing manufacture’ by Keith Harding gives
detailed instructions for the gears and Jacquard cards required for all types
of stitch combinations. Discussing Swiss and combination he says that the warp
bar makes a single nip combination on one motion and the Swiss bar makes its effect
on the other motion, so they are working together to produce the final lace. I
can’t help feeling it would be much easier to understand if I could see the
machine in operation rather than trying to work it out from diagrams!
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