Lace-making is an ancient craft. A lace fabric is lightweight openwork fabric, patterned, either by machine or by hand, with open holes in the work.  The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often lace is built up from a single thread and the open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric.

• Needle lace
  • The most time-consuming but the most flexible of the lace-making arts, needle lace is regarded by purists as the height of lace-making. There are many types of needle lace
    i.e. lace made using a needle and thread. Some of these laces can be made much more quickly than the finest of bobbin laces. On the other hand, some antique needle lace is made from a very fine thread that is not manufactured today.
• Bobbin lace
  • As the name suggests, bobbin lace is made with bobbins and pillows. The bobbins, turned from wood, bone or plastic, hold threads which are woven together and held in place with pins stuck in the pattern on the pillow. The pillows contain straw, preferably oat straw or other materials such as sawdust, insulation styrofoam or ethafoam. Bobbin lace can also be made using copper or silver wire instead of thread.
• Cutwork
  • Cutwork, or whitework, is lace which is constructed by removing threads from a woven background, and the remaining threads wrapped or filled with embroidery.
• Crocheted lace
  • This includes Irish crochet.
  • Knit lace
    • Knit lace includes Shetland lace, such as the "wedding ring shawl", a lace shawl so fine that it can be pulled through a wedding ring.
  • Tatting
    • Tatted lace is made with a shuttle.

Apparel Definition

Learn more about fabric.

Learn about knit fabrics.

Learn about woven fabrics.