Click here to see how to start designing lace. That also gives links for how to continue. This page gives some general principles which might help you as you take things further.
Click here for calculating how many pairs of bobbins are needed for a pattern, and where they should start.
Torchon lace uses very geometric forms. This limits you as you what designs are possible, but it does mean that it is easier to figure out designs that should work.
The lines in lace, especially Torchon lace, are diagonal. The threads for a stitch come from the row above, either from the left or from the right, and that gives these diagonals. These tend to make diamond shapes, either in solid blocks or as blocks of ground. Torchon uses a square grid, so these diamonds tend to be tilted squares.
However, there are two more important lines in lace, the two edges. The footside is straight. This means that next to the footside, there tends to be a triangular shape. This is often made up of ground, but solid triangles can make very striking patterns.
Of course, you can have an insertion, with footsides on either side, but sooner or later you have to think about headsides. If you look at them, you will find that Torchon headsides tend to be partly triangles! They have curved edges, but this happens because of the way you work it. As far as the design goes, the triangle is already produced by the headside. Very convenient!
If you look at the piece of lace above, you can see the triangles along the footside, and along the bottom of the headside (marked in blue). In between are the diamonds of rose ground and those large spiders (red). These are framed by strips of half stitch, which make zigzags and chevrons, but we've already discussed this pattern here. By the way, the diamonds look rather squashed for tilted squares! Lace often gets pulled out of shape, or possibly this particular pattern wasn't made on a square grid.
So one approach to designing lace is to start with these diamonds. Work out how big they should be. If you are using ground using more than 2 pairs, such as rose ground, then there must be an even number of pins on each side, or the rose ground won't fit. More complex ground needs even more thought. Spiders can be various sizes (which helps!) or you can fit some ground round a spider, or use spider ground.
Torchon lace tends to have alternate solid areas and open areas, such as ground or spiders. This is because if you put grounds next to each other, or next to spiders, then the individual parts tend to blend into each other. That doesn't mean that you can't work the lace, of course, and you may like the effect. That's up to you! But if you look at traditional patterns, the alternation is clear.
So round the clusters of ground, you might want a zigzag, or some diamonds, or something like that. These can be any size you want. Then it starts to depend on how many bobbins you are going to use. Do you want to tidy it up with the footsides and headsides, or are you going to add some more diamonds?
A footside gets added along one edge, and the gaps get filled in with ground. These gaps don't have to be triangles, of course. You can put the footside further away, and have the design running along one edge, with quite a large area of ground before the footside. This is, perhaps, more like Bucks Point, but possible in Torchon.
Headsides get added along the other edge, or on both edges of course! Double headside lace seems to usually be symmetrical. I must admit that sometimes I deliberately avoid this, just to see the effect:
Having read the above, try looking through my Torchon lace patterns. See what lace you like, and how I did it. Look at other lace as well. Think about why you like an effect, and how it was done, and why you don't like it. Use all this as inspiration for your own designs.
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index