It all begins with an idea for an edit….

There is a broad community of tatters around the world, and videos are often made to be accessible in multiple languages. But sometimes just watching is enough if you have the basics down.

In Italian, but largely music and making bobbin lace on large bolster pillows.

A needle lace from Italy, practiced still today in Burano, uses a pillow as a base and an additional object to lift the pattern up.

A lacemaker from the Queyras region of France uses a specific kind of lace pillow called a “tambour” or drum pillow.

Reticella is one of the oldest forms of lace, and it is another kind of needle and thread lace.

This lace machine, from a museum exhibit, appears to be a Barman machine. It makes copies of some of the simpler laces using the same motions a lacemaker would.

This video shows the basics of tatting with a shuttle. There is another type of tatting—needle tatting—with a similar outcome but a different tool.

Mundillo lace, made in Puerto Rico, is a bobbin lace with a characteristic lace roller pillow.

Alençon lace is a needle lace, that is: made with needle and thread and not with bobbins. This video (in French) illustrates how that is done.

My personal journey to lace includes immersion in Ipswich lace history and reproduction. In this talk that my colleagues and I did for the Maine Historical Society, you can learn more about this special New England lace.