Animals

Cobweb Pattern

I wanted to make a very open pattern with half stitch bars and spiders, and a single twisted footside. There are cloth stitch and twist fans on the headside. There is one interesting stitch here. Next to the footside, there are half spiders. Two pairs of bobbins come in from the right, but only one pair from the footside itself. You work the footside pair through the other two pairs the same as a spider. The footside pair also has to come in for a dummy stitch before and after the spider.

I wanted to work this pattern in grey, for two reasons. In Geogette Heyer's book 'Powder and Patch', one of the characters has grey lace, and I wanted to see what the effect was. Also I had an email from a lacemaker in Monserrat, who explained that due to volcanic activity on the island and the ash in the air, their lace got dirty very quickly, so they worked in grey thread, so it didn't show! I think the final effect looks a little like cobwebs, so that's what I call it.

15 pairs of bobbins.

Cobweb Pattern

The previous pattern accidentally looked like cobwebs. I thought that I'd try to make more realistic spiders' webs.

The webs are framed with cloth stitch fans. You could work the lace in all one colour, but I wanted to highlight the webs, so any threads which go into the webs are grey and the rest are dark green. There are 12 pairs of grey (6 each side) and 4 pairs of green (2 each side). One pair of green are the workers for each fan, and the other pair run along the very edge of the fan. I swapped over the worker for each fan, as workers use more thread and I had had wound equal thread on all the green bobbins, so wanted to use them evenly. The pattern naturally suggest this anyway. If you use the same pair of workers for all fans on one side, then you could even have just the two pairs of worker bobbins green, and the remaining 14 pairs of bobbins grey. It's up to you. The worker bobbins and the edge bobbins are twisted between the edge stitches which gives more strngth to the edge and makes a slight gap between the grey/green cloth stitch and the all green cloth stitch. This isn't necessary if you want to leave it out.

The middle of each web is, naturally, a spider. All the rest of the stitches are cloth stitch and twist, with each pair twisted again afterwards - a cloth stitch and two twists, if you like! Again, this isn't necessary for the pattern but it does tighten the pairs of threads into looking like a single thread, which helps the look, I think. The pins are a little peculiar. Usually for Torchon, you would expect the pin to go into the middle of the stitch, as in Torchon ground. But I didn't want the little holes in the middle of the stitch that produces. So I put the pins in outside the stitch, sometimes after the stitch between the pairs of bobbins, rather like a Bucks ground, and sometimes before. It depended on the web itself. You need the pin to stop the usual pulling of the threads to pull the web out of shape. The diagram on the right shows where the pins must go. For threads coming in on the slope, put the pin inside the web (after the stitch in the top half, before the stitch in the bottom half). But the top, side and bottom threads, put the pins outside the web (before the stitch at the top, after the stitch at the bottom and rather awkwardly at the side of the stitch for the sides). If you find this too difficult, by all means put the pin in the middle of the stitch as usual! The other strange things about this pattern is how I started it and ended it. See left for the starting pins (red) and how many pairs of bobbins. Half the threads will hang downwards, as normal, to work the right top fan. The other half are worked across the top of the lace for the very top fan (you may need to turn the pillow through a right angle to do this). When you have worked that, turn the pillow back again, and the bobbins hang down normally to work the left top fan. At that point, you have all the bobbins in play, working normally. You end the lace in the same way, turning the pillow to work half the bobbins in the bottom fan. The best way to tie off the threads is similar to a mat, although you are tying together pairs of threads rather than tying one pair through a starting loop. 16 pairs of bobbins.

A correspondent asked me if I knew any patterns with dogs in Torchon lace. I didn't, and thought it would be quite hard. However, I had a go at designing my own pattern. and here it is.

There is a Twisted Fan Headside and simple Torchon ground. I have used a Winkie pin twisted footside. This was partly to keep the number of pins down, as I needed quite a lot to get the shape of the dog. When working the shape of the dog's feet, take the worker threads right across to the footside and back again.

The dogs themselves are worked as solid shapes in cloth stitch. The diagonals are simple, just follow the convetional diamond technique. However, there are a lot of horizontal and vertical lines, which are harder. The verticals (when working the lace) are the sides, and happen in the dog's body. Alternate rows pick up a pair of bobbins which immediately leave again. This means that you have to work ground stitches to get the next pair of bobbins ready! The other rows have no threads joining or leaving, which isn't common for solid shapes, but necessary here, or the lace won't have enough rows, and look sparse. The bottoms of the feet, although vertical (when working the lace) don't need extra pinholes as the workers go through the Winkie footside instead (see above).

The horizontals happen at the front of the boddy and the end. I tried to work the start threads by working two pairs of bobbins in cloth stitch without a pin, then putting the pin between the pairs after the stitch was worked. This was the space out the threads a little for the shape. When they leave the shape, I worked the two pairs as half stitch, pin, half stitch, which is equivalent to a cloth stitch and twist with the pin in the middle. I don't know that these were particularly successful. The shapes need a lot of tightening, and as you can see, I sometimes forgot! They are supposed to be Scottie dogs, by the way. The big dogs are better than the puppies, which don't have enough threads to really define the ears or tail.

25 pairs of bobbins.

I wasn't happy with the small scottie, so I tried a different way.

The net is Bucks Point ground. I have used Winkie pin twisted footside. The dog is worked as solid shapes in cloth stitch, but this time I tried using gimp threads. Normally a gimp is a thicker thread which is not part of the normal grid, but worked in between the line of pins. It surrounds a shape to emphasise it. I used a pair of threads rather than a single thicker one. They are only used for the figure itself.

20 pairs of bobbins + two extra pairs for the gimp.

Here is another attempt. I concentrated on the head of the dog, and tried to represent four different types of dog. The top one is a dog with floppy ears, possibly a labrador. Then we have the Scottie again. Then perhaps a terrier. Finally a long nosed dog like a grey hound.

The net is Bucks Point ground. This does not have the little holes which are a little distracting in Torchon ground. I have used Winkie pin twisted footside again. The dogs themselves are worked as solid shapes in cloth stitch. As an additional flourish, the eyes are worked as raised tallies. The cloth stitch is worked down to the top of the eye. Then a pin is put in between the two pairs that are going to be used for the tally. (I forgot this for the top dog's head, which is why the cloth stitch has been pulled out of shape a little.) Now the two pairs are carefully lifted out of the way. I hung them off the back of the pillow (beware pins!) The rest of the threads continue working cloth stitch until they reach the bottom of the eye. Now the two pairs are retrieved (carefully!) back to their original position. They are worked as a tally until you reach the bottom of the eye. Put in another pin between the two pairs. Now continue to work the cloth stitch, including the two pairs in their original position. The tally sticks up above the cloth stitch, which is why it's called a raised tally. It only appears on one side of the lace.

19 pairs of bobbins.

These dogs, and the cats below, are quite tricky to work. You need to tighten the threads often. You can see from the pictures that I wasn't always successful!

I don't think these patterns are suitable for beginners.

If I've done dogs, then I've got to try cats! The obvious thing is to concentrate on the eyes. The cat on the left is a long haired cat, which looks as if it has a much broader face, although it is really just fur. The right-hand cat is a short-haired cat. Their names are Nutmeg and Rosie, and they belong to a friend of mine.

The net is Bucks Point ground. I have used Winkie pin twisted footside again. The cats themselves are worked as solid shapes in cloth stitch. The mouth of the left cat was done by twisting the passived at the right place. The right cat's nose was made by miniature chevrons, similar to the eyes.

20 pairs of bobbins + two extra pairs for the gimp.