When you make lace, you manipulate thread to make "stitches," the smallest unit in a piece of lace. The result is a decorative fabric that is characterized by open spaces adjoining complex combinations of individual stitches. You can make a lace stitch with a needle and thread, or by crossing threads held on bobbins -- the two primary techniques for hand-made lace. Both developed at different points in the sixteenth century, and by 1600 both were used to decorate furnishings and fashion. As an industry, hand-made lace was especially vulnerable to the whim of fashion as well as to increasing mechanization. The first machine nettings appeared in 1764, developed from modifications to the stocking frame invented by William Lee in 1589, but it was not until 1786 that a suitable product resulted. Subsequently many hand-worked bobbin and needle lace motifs were appliquéd onto machine mesh grounds. Hand-made lace ceased to be a viable commercial product in the aftermath of World War I, although interest in lace-making as a craft persists. Machine-made laces continue to find commercial viability in both fashion and home furnishings. No one technique of lace-making is necessarily exclusive, so there are many laces that combine both needle and bobbin motifs.