When Jill emailed me questions about the Laton jacket, many of them focused on the lace details which were too hard to see from the photos taken outside the case. The lace was applied to the jacket later in
its life, but shows in the portrait and thus is contemporary. We know that it was added later because there are remnants of the silk ribbon ties sewn into the seam which was removed to add the lace.

One of the big questions was how the lace was started or ended. Was it folded back and by how much? The answer was surprising to me. There was no fold finishing or tacking of ends under the seams. The lace was cut and the pairs looked to be tied (I will let the lace experts look at the photos to confirm this) and then applied directly to the wings with that cut edge just hanging there. For the other pieces (cuffs and the one piece that runs all around the fronts, collar, and back edge), the lace comes back and meets itself and so
they tied the pairs of the opposite ends together. The join was in the ‘V’ opening in the sleeve for the cuff lace and the join was just under the right ear area of the collar for the largest piece.

The amazing thing was as crude as the joins were made, it took Susan and I awhile to locate them. Especially around the jacket edge. We had to turn the jacket around a bit to find it. Just goes to show that when there is so much going on visually, these rough spots just don’t show up!

I add a picture of our lace here to show an end. To me, this is very nicely finished compared to what I saw on the jacket – but again, I can’t wait to her Carolyn’s comments once she looks at the photos.

Tricia