Tambour lace: frame, hook and thread

 

Tambour lace is a fine, delicate lace made by working chain stitches through a machine-made net background, using a tambour hook. The net is held taught in a frame so both hands are free to accomplish the tambouring. One hand holds the tambour hook above the net and the other controls the thread beneath the work. The hook is inserted through a space in the net, it then picks up a loop of thread and pulls this through to the front. Keeping the loop round the hook, the hook is then inserted into an adjacent space in the net and another loop is picked up through the first one. When this second loop is pulled through to the front of the work, the first loop will be left as a chain on the front of the net. The work then progresses forming a line of chain stitches, which are used to outline the pattern. Filling stitches can then be added either with the tambour hook or using a needle and thread. 

When I make tambour lace I pin my pattern below the net, but this does mean I have to keep moving it out of the way to make the chain stitches, which is time consuming. Commercial workers often had the design printed onto the net, which made the work faster. They would also have had a larger frame for the net so that several people could work on one design together and speed up the work. Large and small frames both allow a length of lace to be made, as the completed part can be wound around the roller at the end of the frame and a new area of net moved to the working area. Attaching the net in the way I show here using a binding also allows the work to be moved up easily when you move to a new section.

In the early nineteenth century, embroidery and tambouring on net were the only ways to make decorated lace. It wasn’t until later in the century that the ability to make patterned lace entirely by machine was invented. Tambouring on net later became the speciality of Coggeshall in Essex and Limerick in Ireland.