Handmade continuous bobbin lace tapes are flat and smooth where they turn the corners and loop about. There are no gathers or wrinkles, no fold-overs or over-laps. The lace-maker builds in the turns and loops as she goes along so they stay flat.
Purchased tapes are not “bendable” or “loop-able”, they are straight and they have to be coaxed around corners by a series of gathers and puckers. Run your finger along one of the tapes on your cloth, notice where it starts and where it stops. Notice the gathers the lacemaker had to make, the “wrinkles” she devised to make it loop around. Notice the over laps or folds she had to make at the sharp turns. I believe the intention of Renaissance Tape Lace was to create something that looks like handmade Milanese Bobbin lace, but which took much less time to complete. Beautiful stuff, all the same!
Milanese. A similar look, but no gathers, no wrinkles, smoothly hand made.
Milanese 1 | Milanese 2 |