Swiss Embroidery Secrets

With Easter coming up we have been seeing a lot of people buying some beautiful laces and Swiss edgings. So of course we started talking more about these products and discovered that some of us didn’t know as much about Swiss embroideries and edgings as we should! So we have educated ourselves and thought we might pass on the information.

Swiss embroideries are made on large looms in mills in Switzerland. The embroideries are made in panels of 10 or 15 yards with many designs in a panel. The individual designs are later cut apart to sell on bolts.

This is a vintage panel of Swiss embroideries…this is how they would look right off the loom!

You can see how the designs would later be cut apart for each individual edging.

Here at Farmhouse we have come across some vintage salesman samples of Swiss trims. To make these samples a piece would be cut across the whole panel of embroideries and then each embroidery would be stamped with the style number. The piece would then be put into a book and salesmen would take these books around to retailers.

You can see the stamped numbers on the right of this salesman sample.

The samples would be put into books like this.

You can see by the size of this vintage sample book that Swiss edgings and embroideries used to be much more popular and varied than they are today. After World War I the manufacture of these trims decreased significantly and the market has not really ever recovered. In the 1980s there were 216 mills in Switzerland and today there are only 4! That makes us appreciate the delicate beauty of these trims even more!

 

Check out our Swiss trims and the other amazing vintage treasure finds online at www.farmhousefabrics.com!