Exploring stitches (2)

Winkie pin footside - Triangles

I have always used conventional or sewn footsides. However, a correspondent told me about winkie pin footsides. These are quick to do, although I think they might not be so good to sew onto something else. Still, I think that they work especially well with solid areas near the edge of lace.

This is a simple pattern. It has alternate spiders and rose ground framed in cloth triangles. The edges are, of course, winkie pin footsides. The worker pair which makes the footside is the same worker pair that is used for the triangles. This makes it quick and easy to work, and I think it produces an attractive result.

16 pairs of bobbins.

Winkie pin footside - Diamonds

Here is another winkie pin footside, this time using cloth stitch.

Another simple pattern. It has larger cloth stitch diamonds and smaller half stitch diamonds surrounded by Torchon ground. The headside is cloth fans. The worker pair is twisted just before the edge pair and all pairs are twisted halfway through the fan, but I don't think this worked very well with such a small fan, so you could leave it out. The edges are cloth Winkie pin footsides.

20 pairs of bobbins.

Winkie pin footside - Zigzag

Another cloth stitch winkie pin footside.

This pattern is dominated by a zigzag. The slopes going one way are cloth stitch and the other way is half stitch. The headside is alternate cloth fans and half stitch fans. The gaps are filled in with spiders and, on the other side, with Torchon ground. The edges are cloth Winkie pin footsides.

16 pairs of bobbins.

Tally flowers with six petals

This pattern is based on English Maltese lace. It is my first attempt at tallies, and while I did better than I expected, I made several mistakes. It also uses a trail headside, and half stitch hexagons (called buds), joined to the trail by plaited brides.

You start this pattern in the middle of the trail, at the top, where the pricking shows a line of holes across the trail. You will need to hang all the bobbins across these holes (arrange them as you please), but to stop the lace falling apart at the top, make sure that the bobbins going leftwards are twisted round the bobbins going rightwards. Two pairs are going to leave the trail right away to make the first tally, and make sure these are twisted round other threads as well, or the top of the tally will not be attached to the rest of the lace.

There will be six pairs of bobbins being worked in cloth stitch; this being five passives pairs and a worker pair, of course. You start by working the trail sideways which can be awkward; try turning the pillow! Don't work the trails too far though. The tally is going to be a bit tricky, especially if it's your first one, and it does not help to have pins too far down the pattern to catch the tally worker thread!

I suggest that you read the description of how to work a tally if you haven't worked one before.

Work the top tally down to the pinhole. Then work the trails down to the point that the next two tallies leave the trail (left and right). Drop two pairs from each trail. Work those tallies as well. Now join these three tallies in a three-way join. Carry on with the three tallies below the join.

Work the trails down to where the tallies rejoin the trail. Pick up the ends of the tallies, and carry on with the trail until the bud pattern. Drop off two pairs from the trail, and work as them as a bride to the bud. This bud is worked with half stitch. The end of the bride is split into two where it joins the bud, as only one pair is picked up in each row. Similarly, the pairs leave the bud individually, and then get worked as brides to rejoin the trail.

Continue working the pattern until you get to the bottom. All the bobbins end up practically at the same point! I worked the bobbins from the vertical pair through one of the trails, and tied it off the other side. Then I took a pair from one trail and tied it to the equivalent pair on the other trail.

This pattern takes 14 pairs of bobbins.

Tallies and picots - line of flowers

This is a simple pattern, designed to try out techniques in tallies and knotted picots.

There are two Crown headsides on each edge, joined by tallies. The yellow dots are knotted picots. The tallies are quite short. All junctions are lazy joins, even those between the plaits and the tallies. All these stitches use two pairs of bobbins at a time, and the lazy join swops them over, which keeps the pattern taut.

I used this technique of working tallies, which was easy to do. I haven't quite got the kack of constant width tallies yet!

16 pairs of bobbins, with 2 pairs at each pinhole to start with.