Ornate and practical – this thread is somewhere between #5 and #8 equivalent, totally cotton, they say machine washable – very cheap for visitors and the very few middle class Paraguayans left; and so ultimately expendible maybe, for every day living .

In the right style of house a table setting of this kind of thing would be simply gorgeous.

But by comparison the finer stuff is breathtaking. 

Overlapping the one above onto one of the much finer coloured ones pictured below, shows the difference between the various grades available- the coarser of course is cheaper, and often applied to clothing – even some of the skirts we saw were of this but IMHO the garment would be a bit scratchy – a bit of starch and lots of ironing are needed to totally flatten it out after washing if it is of cotton, which most is. I do have a couple of pieces in Aus which are silk fibres.

Actually this back view of units containing high contrasts enables us to see how the construction continues once the the units are made.

In this design there is a lovely little connecting motif between the large circles – see down on the lower edge of this corpped pic one is pink/blue the other yellow/blue. 

Three of the several fine quality table centres I bought, showng the range of colours, hard to resist. The thread is #50 sewing machine thread approx.

The very folky appearance given by these random colour combinations strikes me as having something akin to sampler quilts, on which I have been known to express strong views in some quarters…. and I did buy one coffee and creme coloured one.

These mats are approx 25cm across. 

A couple of weeks ago I put up a pic of very fine lace of this type, an antique hanky most likely. In my recent trp up to Paraguay I searched but could not find except in museums, anything of equivalent fine standard. As this pic shows, the units are made individually using needle lace techniques – this coloured thread is of the coarsest guage we saw – equivalent to about #8 perle perhaps, maybe a bit larger – and some I bought was a lot finer and therefore more exy.

From the one or two pics I saw in travel guides, I really did not think I would like the coloured lace, being more inclined to the traditional beauty of the white or cream; but it is totally beautiful, quite glorious en masse, and when I drag DH back there some time I would like to buy a cloth in full living colour to fit our Aus table, with the extensions in. Well that’s the current theory .

Many of these units are appliqued onto clothing, sometimes set in, although we also saw entire skirts of lace; and in the ministerio de tourismo proudly stands even a Paraguayan national flag, comprising horizontal bands of red, white and blue lace units, with a hand embroidered symbol that sits in the middle of their flag denoting the star, palm and olive branches.