Needle Lace: Real Lace From a Needle and Thread

What Needle Lace Is

Needle lace is lace built entirely with a needle and thread, one looped stitch at a time. You lay a thread outline, then fill it with rows of buttonhole-style loops until a solid, lacy shape appears in the space. There is no fabric underneath the finished lace and nothing woven on a loom. The thread becomes the lace.

That is the part that surprises people, and it is worth saying plainly if you have arrived unsure what you are looking at:

• Needle lace is worked with a single needle and thread over a temporary outline. It is also called needlepoint lace or point lace. That is the craft this whole section covers.
• Bobbin lace is different. It is worked with many threads wound on bobbins, crossed and twisted on a pillow. If you have seen a lacemaker with a cushion full of pins, that is bobbin lace, not needle lace.
• Needlepoint (without the lace) is different again. That is counted stitching on canvas, closer to cross stitch than to lace.

You do not need to know any of the history or the terms to make your first piece. If you can sew a row of buttonhole stitch, you already have the movement needle lace is built on. Everything else is that same loop, repeated and shaped.

Choose Your First Piece

The quickest way to understand needle lace is to make a small piece of it. Both of these are worked from ordinary thread on a simple padded outline, and both walk you through every stitch with photographs. Start with the heart, then use the same stitches to build something three-dimensional.

The Needle Lace Stitches

Needle lace uses a small family of stitches, and once you have the first two the rest are variations. Here is what each one does and where you can learn it on this site. You do not need them all at once. The heart tutorial teaches the first three; the daffodil adds the trumpet filling.

• The cordonet. The outline thread that frames the shape. Everything else is worked onto it, so it is always the first step. Couched down over your pattern, then buttonholed over at the end to finish the edge. Laid step by step in the heart tutorial.
• Corded single Brussels stitch. The most common needle lace filling. A row of buttonhole loops worked over a supporting cord, giving a firm, close texture. Worked in the heart tutorial.
• Double Brussels stitch. The same loop grouped in pairs with gaps between, so the filling turns open and airy. The contrast between corded single and double Brussels is what gives a piece texture. Also in the heart tutorial.
• Pea stitch (mesh). A lighter net-like filling used for delicate areas. It shapes the trumpet of the daffodil. Worked in the daffodil project.
• The buttonhole edge. Close buttonhole stitches worked over the cordonet to give needle lace its firm, slightly scalloped outline and to tidy every loose end away. It is the last step of almost every piece.

A dedicated stitch reference, with each filling catalogued and diagrammed on its own, is on the way. For now, the two tutorials above cover every stitch listed here.

A Craft With a Long History

Needle lace is centuries old. It grew out of cutwork and drawn thread work in Renaissance Italy, then travelled to France and Belgium where it became some of the most prized lace ever made. Knowing a little of that story changes how the stitches feel under your hands: you are working the same loops that trimmed collars and cuffs four hundred years ago.

Where Needle Lace Leads Next

The Brussels stitches you learn here are the same ones used to build raised petals, leaves and figures in other techniques. If you have enjoyed needle lace, these two sit right beside it.

Carol Leather

Carol Leather learned to stitch at her grandmother's knee and turned that early love into a lifelong career. She has taught hand embroidery since 1992, at major UK needlework shows, in local craft shops, and through private and one-to-one classes, alongside designing for British needlework magazines. With more than 30 years of teaching behind her, she creates patterns and clear, encouraging tutorials in cross stitch, blackwork and other embroidery techniques, always with the beginner or returner in mind. Carol works from her cosy home office, answers every message she receives, and delights in helping stitchers find calm, skill and satisfaction in every finished piece.

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