Shapes in Torchon lace tend to have diagonal edges, such as diamonds, zigzags and hearts. It is possible to have other, more complicated shapes, with both vertical and horizontal edges. This page deals with vertical edges. Click here for horizontal edges.
A triangle running along a footside (such as pattern 397) has a vertical edge. Click here for a description of how to do this in detail. Summary - there are a number of pinholes down the vertical edge - with a pinhole for every row of lace.
This means that there are more pins than usual. In this example, the top, middle and bottom pin can be treated as usual - a pair comes in from the right to make a stitch with the worker pair, then returns to the lace on the right.
The other pins have no pair coming in from the right. The worker pair works across all pairs in the triangle at this point, the pin is put in, and then the workers are worked back for the next row.
This can give a weak vertical edge, as the rows with pairs coming in from the right have more stitches than the rows without. If the triangles touch each other, then I sometimes include an extra passive pair, which can run along this edge, just to neaten the edge up a little. Non-standard for Torchon, but this is rather a non-standard technique anyway. Do not put in an extra passive pair if the shape with vertical edges is isolated, like the cat, above. You will come to the end of the shape, and you will have a surplus pair, and nothing to do with it! Perhaps you could tie it off in the middle of the lace (but you would not want to do this all the time if you had lots of isolated shapes.) This does not happen if the shapes touch each other, as the extra pair stays within the shapes, so it does not appear in the rest of the lace. This extra pair is quite a technical point, so you do not have to do this if you do not understand it - just put up with the jagged edge!
A left-hand vertical edge behaves just the same.
If you understand how to work a triangle, you will see how to adapt the technique for other vertical edges.
© Jo Edkins 2020 - return to lace index