I found some glow-in-the-dark thread in a shop, and couldn't resist it! I decided to make a pattern of moths circling round a light-bulb.
Pattern:
Bobbins: 24 pairs (white) + 2 pairs (glow-in-the-dark)
Style: Experimental Torchon
Stitches:
half stitch
cloth stitch
cloth stitch and twist
gimp
Details:
diamond - rounded off (red)
Torchon ground (grey)
twisted footside (grey)
Description:
Follow the links above for explanation of how to work the different parts of the lace.
Most of the pattern is very simple Torchon. The moths are outlined two two pairs of glow-in-the-dark threads, one pair going each side, and crossing over between the top wing and the body, and between the body and the bottom wing. These pairs are treated like gimps, so they are worked in cloth stitch and twist with the white threads, but there are no pins, they are are not on the normal Torchon grid, and they are started and finished as gimps. I call these false gimps. I could have used a single glow-in-the-dark thread as a conventional gimp, but I was worried that it wouldn't show up well enough.
The light-bulb is a diamond, but it has horizontal and vertical edges to make it rounded. The glow-in-the-dark effect is made by having the worker pair as glow in the dark. I left all the other white pairs in the diamond as passives. It made the diamond slightly denser than usual (as there was one more passive pair) but it seemed to work. The worker pair gets introduced round a pin, and gets finished off at the end of the diamond by knotting round a pin.
Here is the lace in the dark (after exposure to light, of course). The moths and light-bulb do glow!
© Jo Edkins 2018 - return to lace index