December, 1906 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



381 



Machines turn out lace to-day in a countless number of 

 yards and in patterns as many as the sands on the seashore, 

 but one length of handmade lace is worth a whole year's 

 product of the factory. To-day girls and women have revived 

 the art of lace making and are able to earn a fair wage by 

 such labor. They make it just as did our great-grand- 

 mothers in the eighteenth century, as they do in the nun- 

 neries and wayside cottages in the old world to-day. 



Tn Ipswich, Mass., they still preserve the lace pillows and 

 the bobbins that were used by the lace makers before the 

 Revolutionary War. Not as a pastime, but as an industry, 

 was this lace work carried on, and some fortunate young 

 women, during the last year, have worn as part of their wed- 

 ding costumes some of the lace their great-great-grand- 

 mothers ordered from similar lace makers, and woven when 

 they too were married. 



Among these old laces is the "needle point," but the bob- 

 bin or pillow lace was more commonly made. The pillow 

 was round, stuffed with hay, 

 and covered with some dark 

 material. The pattern of 

 lace was pricked out on 

 parchment and fastened to 

 the center of the pillow. The 

 long pins outlined the pat- 

 tern and the threads on the 

 bobbins were knotted 

 around them according to 

 its varying figures. As the 

 lace was made, its length 

 fell into a little bag at the 

 side of the pillow to keep 

 it clean. The rattling of 

 the bobbins — sometimes a 

 hundred in all, for each sep- 

 arate thread must have one, 

 and each mesh of the lace 

 had its own thread — min- 

 gled with the chatter and 

 laughter of the workers, for 

 in the days of the Puritans 

 there was love making and 

 gossip, just as there is to- 

 day. 



The patterns were copies 

 of those seen in the lace 

 brought from "over sea," or 

 as in other handiwork weave 

 the reproductions of some- 

 thing near at hand. Jack 

 Frost wrought on a window 



pane a fantastic picture in which a cunning worker found a 

 pattern. Other simpler designs were known as "the fan," 

 "hen's comb," and "double ten." 



In the olden time, the children were taught the easier 

 forms of lace making and their proficiency increased as they 

 grew older. It is said that the best way to learn lace making 

 is to watch an expert. The various stitches had almost as 

 many different names as the patterns, and to learn those was 

 a necessary part of the lace maker's training. It is this old- 

 time lace making that has been revived and with success, 

 adding a new industry for girls and women and one they 

 enjoy. 



Everything is embroidered this year and among the pat- 

 terns is the English open work which is an exact copy of the 

 popular style of a hundred years ago. Much of this is now 

 done by machine, but the woman who can afford it must have 

 the real hand work and this opens a paying industry for deft 

 fingers. Perhaps some of the workers have inherited such 

 from some dead and gone ancestress who adorned her gar- 



ments with "eyelet" work and "scallops," and beautified her 

 collars and under-slecves with the same sort of embroidery 

 as is used to-day. For our grandmothers had no other way 

 of making their "lingerie," as we call it, beautiful, except by 

 their own work, and much of it was so fine and delicate that 

 one wonders how it could have been done by human lingers. 



I know one family which has a christening robe and cap 

 wrought by loving fingers for a baby who became a great 

 statesman and passed out of life fifty years ago. It has a 

 delicate scroll work amid flowers, leaves and tendrils and is 

 exquisite, though yellowed by time. 



The men in the days of old did not disdain embroidery, as 

 is shown in a handsome linen shirt made for a wealthy Salem, 

 Mass., merchant prince. It is of fine linen with a dainty em- 

 broidered ruffle, and with the same pattern on the collar and 

 the cuffs. Not even a skilled worker to-day could reproduce 

 such exquisite stitches, because a hundred wars ago the chil- 

 dren were taught its first principles at their mother's knee 



Teaching the Mysteries of Needlework 



and to do it with the greatest care. To hem, even a pocket 

 handkerchief, was a task of no little moment. There was no 

 sewing machine to run them off at almost lightning speed; 

 each stitch was made with the greatest precision. The 

 threads in the fabric were counted in the hemming, one took 

 up two threads for a stitch, then left two and took up two 

 more. The gathers, which are again used on gowns, meant 

 equal precision and care. 



"What a lot of time wasted!" exclaims a modern, hurry- 

 ing woman, who never has time enough for anything. Yes, 

 but the motto of our ancestors was, "Whatever is worth 

 doing, is worth doing well," and the truth of it is shown by 

 the articles they left behind them, many of which are as good 

 to-day as they were a century ago. 



Another old-time handicraft is the knitting of stockings 

 by the women of the family, of fine wool and cotton for 

 themselves and of coarser material for the men folks. For 

 their own wear, for Sunday best, they were knit in various 

 patterns, including the "open work" for warm weather. 



