Grandma's skills in the long-lost art of making handmade lace are blowing people's minds

Many people wonder why fabrics and clothes with lacework are expensive. The answer is simple. The process of weaving beautiful patterns with threads in the form of lace takes an incredible amount of patience and skill. The Burges area of Belgium is known for its intricate lacework that dates back to the 16th century, reports Kant Centrum. Here, lacemaking teaching started as a way of giving poor households the means to earn a living and now the craft has become an attractive feature for tourism in the town. Recently, a video shared by Kay–who goes by @sewkaysew on Instagram–showed an elderly woman demonstrating how to create lacework in a lace museum of Burges and it quickly captured people's attention.

"Lacemaking in Bruges. Wonderful video taken nine years ago at the lace museum," the caption alongside the video read. In the video, we see the elderly lady making a small piece of fabric with fine details made of threads. As she continues to form beautiful lace patterns by braiding and twisting the threads attached to the bobbins, one can only look at her polished technique and admire the speed at which she weaves. There is also a small pincushion-like material held in place with a set of pins as the lace pattern slowly starts to emerge. The video has received over 61 million views and 2.6 million likes since being uploaded. 

The video was also reshared on Reddit by u/mapleer and the platform users were stunned to see the old lady's speed and skill at lacemaking. u/theo1618 commented, "Seriously though! That looks awful. Not the product, but the process. My mind would be short-circuiting trying to follow everything involved in that." u/MatureUsename69 shared, "One of the things that lead to computing as we know it is the Jacquard Loom which was invented in 1804. It used punch cards like our first computers to automate the loom process. So, in a way, computers were invented by a process that replaces this old lady." 

u/Critical-Art-9277 wrote, "Her eye and finger coordination is so amazing for her age how fast she does it, what a remarkable lady." u/standbyyourmantis remarked, "Lacemaking just feels like witchcraft to me. I can understand on an intellectual level what's going on but when you watch it at speed, it's amazing." u/SaxMusic23 quipped, "You never truly lose the skills you love to have. I know so many 80-year-old musicians who still play with the quality and vigor of a 30-year-old. Piano, guitar, saxophone, you name it." 

The city of Burges has been working towards attracting the attention of fashion enthusiasts and visitors, highlighting the bobbin lacemaking technique through public demonstrations. The Lace Center is a lace museum located in Balstraat, Belgium, where they display the craftsmanship behind the intricate art of lacemaking. The museum also has several multimedia and interactive displays for visitors. The Lace Centre now gives lace courses, runs its own publishing house for books and lace patterns and organizes lace workshops. The Lace Center received the quality label of "Handmade in Bruges" from Bruges in 2018, per Kant Centrum.