Pattern:
Bobbins: 20 pairs
Style: English Midland
Stitches:
half stitch
cloth stitch
tallies (green)
plaits (red)
lazy join
Details:
half stitch trail (blue)
cloth stitch (red)
joining shapes
finishing off
Description:
Follow the links above for explanation of how to work the different parts of the lace.
This is similar to pattern 372, but that was tape lace, joining the pieces together with sewings, and this has no sewings, so I consider it to be English Midland.
The body is started at the antennae, two pairs each. These are plaited down to the head of the butterfly. At the side of the butterfly, the four pairs for each wing are started. Youy do this by hanging them from the pin at one ejnd of a row of the cloth stitch of the body, then working the cloth workers across them for the next row. The wings pairs then leave the body to start the half stitch trail at the top of the wing. This happens on both sides, for each wing. The half stitch is worked up to the tallies. These are started in the same way. The tallies cross over using a lazy join, and rejoin the half stitch trail at the bottom of the first wing. The pairs stay within the trail for a couple of rows, until the top of the bottom wing's tallies are reached. Then two pairs leave the bottom of the trail at the appropriate pin, for each tally. The trail continues between the wings until it reaches the butterfly's body again. The other wing also needs to be worked to this point. Then there are several rows where the half stitch trails and cloth body are worked togeter, sharing pairs, similar to joining shapes. Finally, each trail is worked across the bottom of the bottom wings, picking up the tallies (which are tied off after joining the trail), and up to where the bottom wing joins the top wing. Here the trails are finished off. (I made it a bit of a mess of it!)
I had my normal problems with tallies. The top tallies are too thin, although the bottom ones are better. I think that the boddy would be better with a few more pinholes.
It would be possible to work this with cloth trails bordering the wings. You could also have the body a different colour. The tallies could be a different colour, if you started and finished then separately for each wing.
Close up of the lace, so you can see the working in more detail
© Jo Edkins 2019 - return to lace index