Straight grain on lace?

[Greybird]

I haven't done much with lace fabric before. Can anyone tell me if there is a straight grain on lace? I would like to take advantage of the shaped edging overlapping onto to adjacent plain fabric and I wondered if I can do this regardless of whether or not it lines up with where the pattern piece shows the straight grain ought to be? I have only just ordered the lace so I may be jumping the gun here, but it has been running through my mind. It is a medium weight (I hope!) guipure lace.

[Manuela]

@Greybird, that largely depends on what type of lace you are talking about. Guipure lace for example doesn’t really have a grain and you can cut it any way you like. Apart from stretch lace, you can cut any lace on the cross grain to utilise the scallop edge.

[Greybird]

Thank you @Manuela . This is guipure lace so I should be OK. This is a pattern piece that joins a plain fabric at an angle (B5963) . The pattern just joins the two with an ordinary seam, but I quite fancied using the edge as an overlap.

[BrendaP]

What the fashion industry calls guipure lace and what people who make lace by hand call guipure lace are two different things   

Hand made guipure really doesn't have a grain, it is worked in all directions according to the design, but machine made guipure is a yardage product which comes off the machines in long lengths and so does have a grain. 

However, the structure of a lot of those laces is such that the grain doesn't have a noticeable effect on the way it hangs, and anyway if you are wanting to use a shaped edge to its best effect the chances are that you will be using a line of scallops which are parallel to the selvedges, ie on grain.

Look closely at the back of the lace.  If it shows lots of (more or less) parallel lines of chain stitch then that is the grain.  If you can't see that then use the lace fabric in any direction you wish.