Arsenic And Old Lace?

Did you ever see this crazy film? Produced in 1944 by Frank Capra [who did the Christmas Classic "It's a Wonderful Life"] It involves a young writer who falls in love with the minister's daughter who lives next door. They are preparing for their honeymoon, and he returns to the house where he was raised by two elderly aunts and other eccentric relations.
He finds a corpse...and discovers the old dears have a "ministry to end suffering" by helping old bachelors to depart this life. 
They put arsenic, strychnine and "a pinch of cyanide" in the elderberry wine and bump off the old gentleman! It's a rather dark comedy, but during WW2 it helped take people's minds off Hitler, I suppose. I have none of the poisons [nor any elderberry wine] but I do have a lot of old lace.
Much of it was given by friends when we lived in the Midlands, and I am grateful to them for that. Nottingham was once known as the Lace City, and a lot of the garments made in Leicester factories  were lace-trimmed. 
For centuries lace was handmade- then a Midlands inventor developed a machine which would make lace, and in Victorian times, yards and yards were churned out. [Read more here] I have two boxes full of lace trimmings. And I am determined to use it up purposefully.

So...this year's Christmas Tree Festival Project is going to involve lace. I am also using up some felt from the stash, and recycling the decorations from our 2016 tree. That was the year we embroidered doves, and each one hung inside a hoop which had the name of one of the "Fruits of the Spirit" stitched on it. [Love, joy, peace etc]
The hoops, cut from lemonade bottles, have got crushed in storage, so I stripped off the tape, and ironed it out.  We will use these to decorate felt crackers.
Here are two of my prototypes, made yesterday.  But when I unwrapped some ecru coloured machine-made lace from the card, I found some lovely wording underneath.
There was no attempt to persuade you this was hand-made- but a genuine pride in the quality of the product. "ERL" brand Equals Real Lace. "Insist on having it, support an all-British Industry".  In fact, they were so sure of the consistency of the product that the back of the card bears the number of the worker responsible for these 6 yards of trim. Presumably she had to write her number on that label with her pencil! Click on the picture to read the wording.
I do not know how old this lace is - I am not sure which generous member of our congregation passed it on to me. I suspect it is well over 75 years old. But this year the lace made by Worker 37 has finally come off the card, and will be used to adorn a Christmas Tree in Dorset!