Drawn thread work

Sep 26

Making lace can be extremely time-consuming. The most “sophisticated” way is through traditional needle lace. With a grounding thread, you create a design and then create a web of thread in the open spaces with a variety of decorative open stitches. Another way is through bobbin lace, where pairs of bobbins wound with thread are twisted and knotted in pattern to create lace. Both ways basically create open, lacey fabric just out of thread.

But you can create lace by simply making holes in already woven fabric. An early form of this so-called cutwork is reticella that was popular through the 17th century. Related to cutwork is drawn thread work where threads from either the warp (vertical threads) or weft (horizontal threads) of the fabric are drawn out to create holes, achieving a lace look.

The Pennsylvania Dutch enjoyed yards of handwoven linen in the homespun era and sometimes they used drawn thread to further decorate their embroidered items. Mostly commonly drawn thread was used in a panel of the ausgeneht handduch ‘decorated towel.’ These decorated towels used to hang on the parlor side of a door to the kitchen in older Pennsylvania Dutch homes. It is fairly time consuming and a bit nerve-wracking to cut away threads of fabric and remove them.