A couple of things have struck me as I've read about the various suggestions
for finding hankerchief centres..
One is the the fine quality cotton fabrics, such as the one sold by
Liberty's, are not all that suitable for mounting lace handkerchiefs. The
reason for
this is that although it is a lightweight fabric, and very silky soft, it is
also very densely woven. This makes it extremely difficult to do any of the
attractive hand stitched work which is the 'icing on the cake' for hand made
lace.
I am also very wary about using prehemmed centres - not only are they very
rarely the exact size that you need to fit the lace repeat, they are also often
not quite on the straight grain of the fabric, and in the very worse cases
they aren't even square. If you do buy these, make sure that you fold them
diagonally and check the lengths of adjacent sides in all directions. They are
also often on the samll side.
I was given a piece of lace in Spain which has the ideal linen fabric in the
centre. Not only is the thread fine but there is a space between each thread
so although it has 'body' it is still delicate with the fabric having a
similar appearance to the handmade cloth stitch of the lace.
This space-between-the-threads is what you also find in older cotton
handkerchiefs, so not only are charity/thrift shops a good option price wise,
it is
also often the only source of this fine fabric. For the baby's bonnet which
started the whole discussion, the centre from a gents hanky should give enough
fabric.
Jacquie in Lincolshire.
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