Fabric Definitions — definitions of fabrics, cloths, laces and textile materials from Apparel Search
Lace-making is an ancient craft. A lace fabric is a lightweight openwork fabric, patterned, either by machine or by hand, with open holes in the work. The holes can be formed by removal of threads or cloth from a 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 itself.
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Learn about knit fabrics.
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Every lace answers one design problem — a fabric that is partly air — by one of two routes, and the definition states both. The subtractive route starts from woven cloth and removes: cutwork and whitework cut or withdraw threads and embroider the remaining grid into pattern; appliqué laces such as Carrickmacross cut whole motif areas away against a net. The constructive route starts from thread alone and builds the holes in from the beginning: needle lace stitches its own ground, bobbin lace crosses and twists threads over pins, crochet and knitting loop their open meshes directly, tatting knots its rings and chains with a shuttle. Construction route predicts character — built-up laces can be shaped freely and repaired motif by motif, while cut laces keep the hand and scale of their ground cloth — and it gives the identification method experts use first: examine how the holes were made, and the family of the lace is known before its pattern is even read.
Lace is used at every scale because its pattern is structural. As an edging it finishes handkerchiefs, collars, cuffs, lingerie and household linen — the role that employed the Irish regional industries whose pages sit beside this one: Youghal, Kenmare, Limerick and Inishmacsaint laces, each a town technique. As insertion it joins fabric panels with openwork; as all-over fabric it forms dresses, veils, shawls and curtains where the open pattern itself is the textile. Machine production, which copies each hand family with different machinery, changed lace economics completely — hand lace became a luxury and heritage craft while machine lace made the openwork look ordinary — but machine lace is identified the same way, by construction: a machine net with applied pattern is not built thread by thread, however fine it looks. For the glossary reader, this page is the map: lace is the family, and needle, bobbin, cutwork, crochet, knit and tatted pages are its members.
The definition groups them by construction: needle lace, built with a needle and thread; bobbin lace, woven from threads on bobbins over a pillow; cutwork, made by removing threads from woven cloth and filling the spaces; crocheted lace, including Irish crochet; knit lace, such as fine Shetland shawls; and tatted lace, made with a shuttle. Each family has its own pages in this glossary.
Because it is the most flexible and the most time-consuming method: a single needle and thread can build any pattern at any scale, with no loom, frame or ground fabric limiting the design. Purists regard it as the height of the art — some antique needle lace is made from a thread so fine it is not manufactured today.
A Shetland knit lace shawl so fine that it can be pulled through a wedding ring — the standard demonstration of extreme fineness in knit lace. It is the knit family most famous example: a full-size shawl whose openwork is worked so finely that the whole fabric compresses through a ring.