Click here for lace grids, including fans.
Bobbin lace such as Torchon is usually worked in a strip. This means that it is designed on a lace grid, or pattern of dots set in a diamond pattern, either at 45° to the vertical or 60° to the vertical.
A fan is bent round in a curve. There are more than one way to design a lace grid for a fan. There are examples of these ways here, but the nature of fan grids means that they are dependent on how wide the fan is spread (180° or 120°), and how much of the fan sticks are covered. It may not be possible to take part of a fan grid for one set of fan sticks and get it to work on another set.
The most obvious method is to take a conventional lace pattern, and distort the grid so it bends round in a curve. This means that there is the same number of pins on inner and outer edge. It is reasonably easy to understand how to work, but it does have the problem that the pins on the inner edge are much closer together than those on the outer edge. Still, this is the commonest, so I have given a variety of possible combinations. If you want to design your own grid, then draw regular radii of a circle (say, every 2°) and concentric circles. The intersection of these lines are half the dots of the final grid. Then add another dot in between these dots.
Then remove everything except the dots:
This approach is taking part of a roundel. The lace will start on a horizontal edge.
A different approach takes part of a circular mat.
Remove the centre, and take as much arc as you want. The disadvantage of this approach is that the fan has to be worked in at least two sections, up to the dark grey line, turn the pillow, work the rest. The shapes in the pattern are distorted by the grid, but at least the inner edge is not more cluttered with pins than the outer edge. By the way, the lace will start on a diagonal edge.
I tried to think of a third way, with the advantage of more pins on the outer edge and less on the inner, but without this problem of the pattern being in two halves. Here is my first effort:
Lines are drawn between the dots along the outer edge and the other sides of the arc. The problem with this is that the fan itself varies in width! The lace will start on a diagonal edge, if you want to try this!
So my fourth effort has lines drawn joining the outer edge of the fan to the start and end of the fan (as you work it) and the inner edge - these are the green lines. These are crossed with concentric circles - the blue lines. Then I drew a cross in each diamond - these are the pink lines. The pin holes are not only where the green and blue lines intersect, as in the second fan. They are also where the pink lines intersect. So there are more. Since the blue lines are concentric circles, you can have a narrower strip of grid if you wish.
There are odd distortions within the pattern of dots.
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index