Flowers in tape lace

 

This pretty lace edging is made from a combination of purchased machine-made lace tapes and crochet and was a very popular technique for home lacemakers in the early twentieth century. Many needlework magazines included patterns for this type of lace and a variety of lace tapes were made and sold for the purpose.

These tapes come from an illustration in Therese de Dillmont’s needlework encyclopaedia and show a few of the styles available. The tapes were tacked down onto the backing fabric following the pattern and joined either by needlelace or, as in this case, crochet work. Then when the pieces were all secured to each other the tacking thread was removed and the lace could be removed in one piece.

Both the pieces illustrated here were made using tapes made up of a series of joined leaf shapes. In the main image the tapes have been angled to form petals but in this piece the tapes have been used to form a circle enclosing a larger crochet design. Both are very pretty and were probably made by the same person (they were given to me by a friend and came from the same source). I particularly like the floral one with the little crochet frill overlapping the fabric.