Stitches
This is area on section 25 of my band sampler is covered with an old piece of hand made lace. The Vintage buttons actually cover a tear in the lace as I found it in a second had shop.
Make a cuppa and I will tell you the story.
The old piece of lace I found it in a junk shop in Oxford. It was wrapped around a section of cut off broom handle along with other pieces of lace. I was browsing around the store when I spotted a roll of damaged laces in a shoe box which was on the floor.
What had happened is someone had wound a piece of lace on to the broom handle and slipped a pin in to secure it. Then they had wound on another piece and slipped a pin in. Then another and another. They had done this until the roll was about 4 inches thick.
Needless to say there was a lot lace but also a lots and lots of pins- all rusted! The wad of laces looked to me as if they were of 50’s vintage because that was what was on the outer layer. However since the pins had rusted, there was no real way of knowing what was in there. At the time I was curious about it and when I expressed an interest the shop keeper removed two pieces from the roll to discover the lengths were about 15 cm (6 inches) long and in removing them the lace was likely to tear. She offered them to me for a couple of pounds and I jumped at it.
When I got back home I was delighted because these small pieces of lace got older as I carefully unwound them. I think they were samples from a lace maker as each was tagged. To my amazement I discovered as I unwound the samples they got older and they went back to the Victorian era if not older.
Unfortunately they were all badly damaged. The use of numerous pins to secure each piece of lace had caused rust staining, mould had also caused stains, and worse the samples were often torn.
In some ways it was OK as I wanted to use them for crazy quilting. If they were in good condition I would never have used some of the older pieces but since they were damaged, stained and beyond repair I felt there was no harm if used them for crazy quilting. I dyed the badly rust stained, repaired what was worth repairing. Basically I reclaimed what I could and made something of it. It was a wonderful find and I am still using odd scraps from the bundle!
This piece I felt was special and wanted to keep it. As I said the buttons actually hide a tear in the lace that is very obvious.
Date:
This section of the sampler was worked during 2007.
Size:
The For Love of Stitching Band Sampler is 15 cm (6 inches) wide. It consists of different strips of fabric which are are stitched together to form one long strip. It currently measures 24.8 yards or 22.75 metres long and I have more bands to add.
Sampler FAQ
For the full back story on this piece visit the Sampler FAQ page.
All posts in the series are in the category the Love of Stitching Band Sampler.
