Bucks Point Lace Patterns

Most of this website is Torchon lace, with a square grid. Sometimes I have tried designing lace inspired by Bucks Point. Most of them are not traditional Bucks Point designs, although they use a hexagonal grid and Bucks Point ideas. The simple pieces are on the Beginner's section

Simple pieces on other pages		Straight pieces		Mats and corners on other pages
Bucks fans Honeycomb		Small honeycomb flowers Daisies Flowers and fans Cow Parsley Garland Zigzag Peacock Firebird		Cow Parsley mat 3D cubes mat Flower mat (twelve petals) Bucks Point corner with 3 flowers Bucks Point zigzag corner

Small honeycomb flowers

I have designed some Torchon flowers here. However, for proper flower patterns, it is probably better to use a hexagonal grid. This pattern uses ideas from Bucks Point lace, but it is not a real Bucks Point design, as it uses no gimps and no picots. A gimp is a single thicker thread which is used to outline certain parts of the lace. You could use one round the flowers and leaves in this design. Picots are small loops, and Bucks Point lace often uses them along the edge. You could use them in this pattern if you wish.

I left both these out as I wanted to try a simpler design. The centre of each flower is a cloth stitch diamond, which is surrounded by a circle of honeycomb net. I have marked in where each pair of threads go, to make the working easier. The leaves are also cloth stitch and the net between is Bucks Point ground. There is a cloth footside on each edge, as this is an insertion. When working the lace, use Bucks Point ground (half stitch and twist, pin) where two yellow threads meet, and honeycomb net (half stitch, pin, half stitch) where yellow meets blue, or two blue cross.

The hexagonal grid means that we have a pattern of hexagons (6 sided figures) rather than diamonds (4 sided), and there are no right angles, which gives a much more natural appearance.

This pattern uses 22 pairs of bobbins.

Daisies

This is another attempt to produce some flowers. I think they look a bit like daisies! Each flower either has cloth stitch petals with a half stitch centre, or vice versa. Perhaps cloth stitch petals show up better than half stitch. The ground is Bucks Point ground, with a simple footside. There is a double Torchon ground stitch between the petals.

This pattern has vertical straight lines. These need extra pinholes, not on the standard grid. The pricking pattern has these holes, but since I discovered this while working the lace, the photo shows a mixture of using the extra holes and leaving them out. You might notice that the centre of the top flower has less rows than the bottom flower.

28 pairs of bobbins.

Flowers and fans

This was an attempt at a more complicated pattern. The daisies are similar, although they are simple hexagons. I think that they don't look as good as the previous ones.

The headside is partly cloth fans, and partly part twisted fan.

I started by putting a wiggle between the daisies at the bottom, near the footside. But it doesn't look very impressive, so I put a cloth stitch diamond instead.

This pattern uses 21 pairs of bobbins.

Cow parsley

In England, in May, the cow parsley flowers. This is rather an ugly name for a beautiful flower. It's an umbellifer, with clusters of tiny white flowers in regular patterns, in a domed shape. An alternate name is Queen Anne's lace, so I couldn't resist trying to design a lace featuring it. Here it is. There are the regular white flowers (which are holes in the lace) above a mess of leaves. I must admit that all those leaves are quite challenging. I had to undo bits of the lace several times! See a mat in a similar design.

It uses honeycomb net for the flowers and zigzags for the leaves, with a standard Bucks Point headside.

17 bobbins (I think!)

Garland

This is a simple pattern of crossing garlands.

There are Bucks Point headsides on both sides. Outside the garlands is Bucks Point ground. The garlands are surrounded by gimps. They are the hexagon of honeycomb net. It can be a little tricky working out where the threads leave and join the individual parts of the garland, so click here for a further description. Inside the garlands are alternately flowers and diamonds. The diamonds are cloth stitch and half stitch, with a few stitches of Bucks Point ground to fill the gaps between.

22 bobbins + 4 gimps

Bucks point style zig-zags

This is a Bucks Point style design, but purists would not approve of a few things. There is no gimp, normally the net would be much wider, and the shapes would be more flowing. So I think that you could say this is some Bucks point as designed by someone who normally does Torchon!

There are cloth fans as headside. They have the worker pair twisted before working the edge passives. There are various thin cloth stitch zigzags. These outline honeycomb and half stitch ground. There is bucks point ground (using half stitch and two twists for a firmer ground). The footside is cloth stitch footside with two pairs of passives. This is usual for Bucks Point.

17 pairs of bobbins

Peacock

I saw a Bucks Point design which claimed to be an eagle, but I thought it looked like a peacock. So I tried to produce a simpler version of it.

There are Bucks Point headsides on both sides, and Bucks Point ground. There are five cloth diamonds between the peacocks.

Each peacock is a hexagon of honeycomb net, outlined with two gimps. The gimp starts one side of the peacock, humg from its own pin. One gimp goes round the top, and the other goes round the bottom, then heads for the centre of the lace to make the peacock's head. Originally I tried to put a beak in, but it didn't work, so I did a picot for the beak instead. the gimps join up, pass, overlap each other for a few stitches, then get cut off (and trimmed neatly later). For the last peacock, I worked out that I could do a beak (without a picot) if the peacock faced the opposite direction, and there was two new gimps, just for the head of the peacock. I show this in the pattern. I made these secondary gimps a different colour, which doesn't show up well.

The gimps in this design are actually each pairs of sparkly thread (It is a peacock, after all!) So rather than lifting the gimp over and under the other threads, the gimps are worked through the other threads with cloth stitch and twist. You could have single thick gimps if you prefer.

20 pairs of bobbins + 2 gimps (plus 2 more gimps for last peacock)

Peacock

This is a similar idea, but this time based on a pattern called Firebird (hence the colours). The gimps are single sparkly threads - it might be better to make them pairs of threads!

There is a Bucks Point headside but it is curvy. On the straight parts, a pair of threads comes through the lace, goes through the passives, makes a picot and returns through the passives to the lace. On the sloping part (upwards), a pair of threads comes in the the lace, goes through the passives, makes a picot and back through the passives to become the inner passives. On the downwards slope, the inner pair of passives did the same in reverse. Between the firebirds, there is Bucks Point ground. The footside has a gimp instead of passives. It is joined, at different times, by one, then both, of the other gimps.

Each firebird is surrounded by honeycomb net, outlined with a gimp. The gimp starts from the footside and returns to it. The firebird is surrounded by another gimp (also starting from and returning to the footside). The body of the firebird is done with cloth stitch - the worker threads go round the gimp surrounding the firebird.

15 pairs of bobbins + 3 gimps

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