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Water-soluble embroidery (also called water-soluble lace or water-soluble embroidery lace) is a major family within embroidered lace. The method is simple to describe and demanding to execute: a water-soluble non-woven base cloth (based on polyvinyl alcohol, PVA, fibre) is used as a temporary carrier; the motif is stitched onto it with viscose filament, cotton, polyester or silk embroidery thread; the piece is then treated with hot water so that the soluble base dissolves completely, leaving behind only the motif formed by the interlocking threads — a three-dimensional, openwork lace with no base fabric at all.
What sets it apart from other embroidery is that water-soluble embroidery is not “what you see is what you get”. Stitching produces only a semi-finished piece. The final form is determined by a separate dissolving step, commonly called the “boiling” process. For this reason, both the digitising logic and the stitch selection for a water-soluble design differ completely from those of ordinary embroidery.