Diamonds and solid areas

Lace is usually a mixture of solid areas and areas which are looser, or have gaps in. It is the difference between these types of areas which provide the pattern in the lace. The looser area is ground or net. The denser area can be called toilé.

In Torchon, the simplest example is a diamond. A diamond using 8 pairs of bobbins uses 49 stitches, where ground with the same number of bobbins only has 16 stitches, which shows why the diamond looks denser. It uses less pins, though. Once you have figured out how a diamond is worked, you can extend the idea to fans, strips, zigzags, hearts and buds.

Working a diamond

Diamonds can be of different sizes, but on the left is a pricking pattern for a diamond using 8 pairs of bobbins, 4 each side.

The diagram on the right shows the working of a cloth stitch diamond with just 3 pairs on each side. In a diamond, you work rows of stitches. The first row, at the top of the diamond, is just two pairs of bobbins. Chose one pair (it doesn't matter which) to be the worker pair. In a cloth diamond, this pair will be used for every stitch in the diamond. Work it across the other pair, and pin at the end of the row, between the workers and the other bobbins. Work back again, picking up another pair at the end of the row, and pin again. Carry on picking up an extra pair at the end of each row, from one side then the other, until you are working across all the bobbins in the diamond, which will be the widest part. Now drop a pair off at the end of each row. You should be left with two pairs at the last pin, which are worked across each other to cover the pin.

At the end of each row, after the pin, tighten the working slightly. You do this by pulling on the bobbins very gently. You can also "stroke" the bobbins by running your hands over them downwards, or tap the top of the bobbins. This works with most of the bobbins, but the workers will probably need a gentle tug!

Keep an eye on the pairs of bobbins that join or leave the lace. If you forget a pair, then you will end up with too bobbins at the end. If you drop off bobbins when you shouldn't, you will end up with too few. This is one reason why I tend to mark Torchon ground threads in my patterns. It means that I can check if threads need to join or leave the pattern at each pin.

All pairs need to be twisted before they start a diamond. However, most stitches tend to end up with a twist in each pair, so it will have been done automatically (but it's worth checking!) However, you will also need to twist the bobbins as they leave the diamond. This is done automatically in half-stitch diamonds, but not in cloth diamonds, so you need to remember to do it. Either do it at the end of each row, or do it to all the bobbins when the whole diamond is finished.

You can twist the worker pair at the end of each row one or more times, or leave untwisted. Twisting them, particularly more than once, will leave a little loop. You may find this attractive or not. The main point is to decide whether to twist the workers or not, and stick to it. What matters is consistency.

Cloth Stitch Diamond

This cloth stitch diamond needs 8 pairs of bobbins, 4 coming in on the right, and 4 coming in on the left. These diagrams will be tilted slightly in the real lace, to fit the pricking pattern. All stitches are worked in cloth stitch, with twists at the end of each row, although if you want, you can leave the twists out, or do more than one twist (see above).

The worker bobbin threads are shown in red. You can see how they are used in every stitch. You may need to wind on more thread for your worker bobbins! One of the passive pair of bobbins is shown in blue, to show where they go.

All the pairs of bobbins should be twisted on entering and leaving the diamond. The previous part of the lace has probably twisted them already, but check that it has. But you will need to twist them after the diamond before working the next piece of lace. You can even give more than one twist before and after the diamond, if you wish. This can high-light the diamond more.

The photo shows a cloth diamond from the checkerboard pattern.

Half Stitch Diamond

In a half stitch diamond, there are no worker bobbins. Instead, use the first 4 bobbins for the first stitch. Then leave 2 behind, and use the others plus the next 2 bobbins for the next stitch, etc. This means that you are using different bobbins for every stitch. The red and blue threads start in the same place as the cloth stitch diamond, but they end up all over the place. It is an unfortunate property of half-stitch that the bobbin pairs get split up!

In all diamonds and solid areas, the bobbins need to be twisted before and after working the shape. However, the previous part of the lace may have twisted the bobbins already (but check they have!) and the half stitch will have twisted the bobbins already on leaving the shape, so you don't have to worry about this. You may, of course, wish to give an extra twist if you wish to high-light the diamond more.

The threads pass through a half-stitch diamond in rather a strange way. This adds to the attraction of the finished pattern, but it is important not to make mistakes, as they will show up badly! Some threads go diagonally one way, some the other way, and some travel horizontally (but only as single threads, not like cloth diamonds, where both worker threads travel horizontally). If you twist the last pair of threads in each row, then the same thread is the only horizontal thread for the whole diamond.

The photo shows a cloth diamond from the checkerboard pattern.

Joining two diamonds

Sometimes two diamonds touch, as in the checkerboard pattern. This complicates the working. First, you must work first one diamond, then the other, until the halfway point where they touch. In the diagram on the left, you see that I have chosen the workers so the two diamonds reflect each other. This helps to make the final result look more symmetrical. The join itself can be done in two ways, see right. You have a pair of bobbins from each diamond next to each other. If it is a cloth stitch diamond, then this will be the worker pair. Work these two pairs across each other, and put a pin between them. Now you have a choice. Either you can work them back again to rejoin their own diamond, or you can leave them to become the workers (or equivalent in a Half stitch diamond) of the other diamond. The first method will give a distinct hole where the pin was covered. The second won't, as the pin is just there to stop the horizontal rows drooping at that point. Try each method and see which you prefer.

Fans

A fan is worked in a similar way to a diamond. It is a headside, making an edge of lace. It is described in detail in the section on headsides.

Working a strip

When you work a diamond, you either pick up a pair or drop a pair off for each row. You can also have a strip of cloth stitch or half stitch. These can be of various dimensions. Their working is similar to working a diamond, but you have to be more careful when to pick up or drop off threads.

The diagram on the left shows a strip of cloth stitch, surrounded by Torchon ground. Each pair is shown as a single line. The pair that will become the workers are shown in red. You can see that while a pair is picked up each row until the workers work across 7 pairs, after that, in alternate rows, a pair is picked up or a pair dropped. That keeps the strip a constant width until you meet the next corner, and then it narrows by dropping pairs off on each row, like the second half of a diamond.

Working a zigzag

Once you are confident with working strips, you can try working a zigzag. You would think that these are constant width the whole time (once you've got them started) but in fact you tend to have one more pair of bobbins working alternate rows, because of the way that you pick up and drop off bobbins. Again, marking the ground stitches that lead into and out of the zigzag can help you remember which bobbins to pick up or drop off.

There is one problem about working a zigzag. With diamonds, you may be able to get all threads ready that go into the diamond, then work the entire diamond in one go. However, the zigzag is likely to go the entire length of the lace. So you probably can only work a zig (or a zag). Then you leave the zigzag, work the part of the pattern that uses the bobbins leaving the zigzag until you have enough bobbins to pick up the zigzag again, and work the zag (or, of course, the zig).

The zigzag pattern has a zigzag of half-stitch.

Working a heart

A heart is a specialised zigzag. You work it as if you were starting a zigzag, but taper it off almost immediately. Like zigzags, you can't work it all at once. Get all the threads ready that feed into the heart. Work half the heart. Then work the ground stitches (or whatever the pattern has) to the left of the heart, inside the two points. That will gives you the threads to work the rest.

I like hearts! Here are several heart patterns.

Working a chevron

The hearts above are a small zigzag. If you want hearts lying the other way, then you have more of a problem. These are chevrons, and the problem is that at one point either you move from one worker pair to two (if you are dealing in cloth stitch) or reducing two worker pairs to one. The description covers cloth chevrons. Once you understand the principle, that you can adapt it to half stitch.

On the left, you see that the chevron starts with one worker pair. Work this until you get to the point where it needs to split. Work it across the middle pair of the row, put a pin in. Now work it back again, and treat both those pairs as worker pairs in their own halves of the points of the chevron. You will see that the workers work across the lace in the same way rather than reflecting each other.

The diagram on the right shows a chevron the other way up. Here you start with two worker pairs. When they meet in the middle, work them across each other, pin, and continue one of them (it doesn't matter which) as the remaining worker, leaving the other pair to hang downwards as the middle passive.

I find chevrons quite hard to work. One possible mistake when creating two workers when there had been just one is getting different number of passives in each half! Also, however careful I am, the join never seems neat. The Celtic knot patterns have quite a few chevrons.

Working a triangle

You can work half a diamond, or a triangle. This is particularly useful next to a footside (see right) but you can put it anywhere in the lace. It can be worked in cloth stitch (see right) or half stitch (see left).

You can see that there are extra pinholes down the vertical edge, which are not part of the Torchon grid. A diagonal line has twice as many holes as a vertical line, and since the rows need to join a diagonal line to a vertical one, you need to add the extra holes. So on the vertical edge, some row ends have no threads joining or leaving, and some have a pair of threads joining for one stitch, then immediately leaving.

The Sri Lankan lace and the clutter of spiders use triangles.

Working a bud

You get buds in English Maltese. They are really half-stitch diamonds, but English Maltese uses legs rather than ground stitches, so the buds are joined to the lace in a different way.

In the diagram on the right, the legs are coloured green. The leg at the top is worked down to the start of the bud, then the two pairs in the leg start the first half stitch row. The legs from each side are worked down to near the bud, and the two pairs in each leg are then divided up. One joins the bud a couple of rows before the other one. The middle of the bud is joined to the rest of the pattern with the pair on that side working in cloth stitch to that part of the pattern, pin, and cloth back again. Then the rest of the bud is tapered off in the same way. I've coloured the rows in pink, so you can see the pairs from the legs being picked up separately. The main part of the bud is coloured pale blue. It doesn't reach to the edge like a diamond, because that's what seems to happen.

There is a bud in this beginner pattern.