Diamonds are a common Torchon pattern. But sometimes, they have holes in the middle!
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Bobbins: 12 pairs (4 pairs fan colour, 8 pairs background)
Style: Torchon
Stitches:
twist pair
half stitch
cloth stitch
cloth stitch and twist
Details:
cloth fan headside (blue)
scallop headside (red)
diamond (red)
chevron pointing upwards
chevron pointing downwards
false starting pins
finishing with reef knots
Description: This pattern starts and ends with a point. See links above for how to do this, and for the headsides.
The diamonds start off being worked as usual, until you get to the hole. This causes a problem, since the next few rows need to have two pairs of workers, one pair either side of the hole. One of these pairs will be the pair that you're already using. But you need to choose another pair to be the other worker for the other side. The obvious pair is the central pair, which started off the dimond at the top point with the worker pair. There is more than one way to do this, and I must admit that I keep changing my mind which is the best way! In the photo, you can see that I work the lace down to the two holes on the edge of the diamond in line with the top of the hole. Then I work the worker pair back to the middle, do a cloth stitch and twist with the central pair, put in a pin, then work the worker pair, and the central pair, outwards as worker pairs back to the edge of the lace. (The description in the "upwards chevron description" gives a different technique. Perhaps you can think of yet another one for yourself!)
Whatever technique you use, use both the workers to work cloth stitch either side of the hole with their own half of the diamond's passives, until they get to the bottom of the hole. Then you need to get back to one worker pair again. Reverse whatever technique you used to get two worker pairs!
The links above talk of "upwards chevrons" and "downward chevrons". A chevron is an arrow, pointing up or down, and the top, and bottom, half of the diamond with a hole looks like this. Chevrons always cause me problems with lace, and whenever I do one, I am always unhappy with the result, with part of the chevron looking holey or different to another part. I think this is a case of the lacemaker seeing flaws that other people don't notice as much! But I do want to point out that there isn't a single technique for doing these chevrons.
Close up of the lace, so you can see the working in more detail
Click here for more on how to make lace.
© Jo Edkins 2019 - return to lace index