The lace was a combination of tambour and needlerun embroidery on a machine-made net, and was also known for its large variety of different filling patterns (up to 47 on one collar). It was the availability of machine-made net fabric, rather than the costly hand- made variety, which had enabled the expansion of the lace- making industry.

The quality of Limerick lace came to rival and then to surpass that of any other district in England. Mr Walker proudly offered a large wager that he would select a hundred Irish girls from among his workers, who would produce any given piece of lace superior to any similar work made by the same number of girls from France, Flanders, Saxony or Germany. In a relatively small amount of time, Limerick lace had become arguably the best in Europe.

The designs of Limerick lace were polished and refined, but were also bound by a very conservative market. As lace was such an expensive, luxury item, only available or affordable to the very rich lace buyers would not want to take risks with their purchases. The same people who approved entrants to the lace- making schools also organised and judged the lace- making competitions, thus the designs developed in a very constrained way. It was because of this conservative tendency that new currents in the larger world of design did not impact as they might otherwise have done on the world of lace- making. This is illustrated by the rarity of Art Nouveau lace designs at a time when the influences of this new style were being felt almost everywhere else.