Machine lace edging

This is an imitation of a Torchon bobbin lace edging, but various parts are made in a different way, which shows that this is machine lace.

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This looks like very closely woven cloth stitch, and that is a clue. Bobbin lace does not weave as closely as this. Even tightly woven cloth stitch tends to have small holes in where the threads cross over. This is machine-made.

If you look closely, especially in the non-cloth stitch area, you can see very thin threads holding the normal threads together. These very thin threads are also used within the cloth stitch, holding the worker threads tightly togather. There are normal thickness passive threads as well.

Bobbin lace is made of one thickness thread (apart from gimps, which are something entirely different). So these very thin threads betray its machine-made origin.

The hole in the middle is not diagnostic. Cloth stitch areas in bobbin lace sometimes have decorative holes like this, although not usually as neat.

This machine-made imitation of half stitch on the left has no horizontal threads, and the rest are knitted rather than the weaving efect of bobbin lace. Its main effect is the contrast with the imitation cloth stitch (top left).

On the right, in the same piece of lace as the above, there is an imitation half stitch zigzag, but here the 'half stitch' is done in a different way. The thicker threads are laid across each other, and thin threads bind them together.

I think this is supposed to be rose ground. It manages to reproduce the checkerground of holes and lace, and the central hole. However, the four pinholes are usually missing, and the threads look coggled, with their path unclear, and certainly non-standard. They have been pulled out of true by the thin threads holding everything together.