Rickrack conjures memories of brightly colored chevron embellishments on dresses and other garments from our childhoods and also layers of exquisitely embellished lace. Enjoy this excerpt from Linda Ligon's delightful May/June 1994 article exploring the quirky history of rickrack, then download a free set of patterns to embellish your own rickrack. —PieceWork editors
Make Plain Things Beautiful
It has covered the telltale faded lines of letdown hems, lent a bit of inexpensive color to plain sewing, and been fashioned into forgettable household accessories such as hot pads and pincushions. For generations, it has trimmed countless anonymous seersucker sunsuits, muslin kitchen curtains, gingham aprons, and dimity pinafores. It can be found in virtually every sewing and fabric shop in the country in a wide range of colors and sizes, and it's cheap. Yet this cheery, homely, everyday sewing notion called rickrack is a marvel of ingenuity, both in its method of manufacture and in the surprisingly lovely uses to which it has been put over the years.
Now imagine the machine that can do the same thing: handling a dozen or two fine threads at a time, weaving each one across the others in turn, pulling harder on this one, easing up on the next. What a rickrack braid machine most resembles is a cross between a maypole dance and a carnival ride, with upright yarn bobbins do-si-do-ing around each other while tracing back and forth on a large arc.
Rickrack, once used in lavish amounts, is still available to crafters today. Photo by Matt Graves
Rickrack Applications
The obvious thing to do with rickrack is to sew it on whatever is at hand and let it speak for itself, lending its touch of color, texture, or finish as needed. It has often been sewn into seams of garments to decorate and stabilize them and caught into hem facings as an edge trim. During the 1950s, in what must have been boom years for sewing notions manufacturers, lavish amounts of rickrack became necessary for trimming fashionable dresses—sometimes more than a hundred yards for a single tiered skirt. Most rickrack back then was cotton, which presented a problem: when washed, its points tended to curl. The solutions were vigorous ironing or sewing down each little point by hand, which some people actually did. By the 1970s, most rickrack was made of polyester, curling was no longer a problem, and it contributed to the popular peasant blouse.
But these cheerful and straightforward uses of rickrack pale in comparison to the elegant rickrack laces of earlier generations. Ladies' magazines and braid manufacturers issued countless patterns in which rickrack was incorporated into crocheted or tatted edgings, and sewn into "needlepointed" openwork fabrics. It's difficult to date the earliest such uses of rickrack. The earliest we've seen in old sewing literature, Fancy Work For Pleasure and Profit, was published by the Charles C. Thompson Company of Chicago in 1911.
Two strands of rickrack in contrasting colors serve as a base for crocheted edgings. Photo by Matt Graves
Rickrack in Our Time
New generations of rickrack lace patterns were published in the 1930s and 1940s. They were generally less delicate in scale, calling for wider braid, heavier crochet cotton, larger hooks. Using rickrack and thread in contrasting colors or colored rickrack with variegated thread became popular. Little rickrack/crochet baskets and other tricky constructions that would be clever on the bridge table or in the modern kitchen were frequently seen. Ways of braiding two or more strands of rickrack in matching or contrasting colors to serve as a base for crocheted edgings were devised.
In the 1950s and 1960s, rickrack joined the trend to quick and showy craft projects, along with sequins, styrofoam balls, and punch-mounted rhinestones. Necklaces were made of multiple strands of braided rickrack, flower shapes of gathered and stitched rickrack were sewn to dresses, pillows, and tote bags. These efforts have not, for the most part, resulted in what most of us would consider heirloom collectibles.
Jane Fournier's patterns to crochet and tat edgings for Rickrack. Photo by Joe Coca.
It is unlikely the kind of tasteful and abundant use of rickrack that marked the lace fabrics of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers will return; fewer people have the time to embark on such projects. But a little edging, a small table centerpiece—why not? And even if you don't choose to tackle this kind of work, rickrack from this period is still to be found. Keep an eye out for examples in flea markets and garage sales, and appreciate the ingenuity and craftsmanship that they embody.
Discover Jane Fournier's FREE patterns for embellishing rickrack with crocheted and tatted edgings “Rickrack Edgings to Make" for in the PieceWork library.
Earlier version published 05/02/2018; updated 8/17/2026