Lace with Flowers

Big and little fan flowers

Someone sent me an email asking for patterns with flowers on. I replied that my patterns were Torchon lace, which didn't lend itself to flowery patterns, and I advised that she tried Bucks Point or Honiton instead. Then I started thinking whether you could produce flowers with Torchon designs. Here is my first attempt.

I used coloured thread to high-light the leaves and the flowers. The leaves are based on cloth diamond with the worker threads in green. The net on the bottom is cheating a little, since it is Bucks Point ground, but you could use some other Torchon ground if you prefer.

I wanted to try different effects for the flowers. The large flowers in the headside are Twisted Fan headside. I used one yellow and one orange thread as workers for this, to give a slightly richer effect. The small flowers are simple half stitch fans and there is a twist at each pin to make sure that the same colour thread is used as worker throughout, with the other thread staying at the edge of the flower. By twisting at the start of the flower, you can choose which colour to make the flower. I've varied this, but you might wish to make the small flowers always the same colour. These close-ups show where the different coloured threads go. Of course, you could always works the whole pattern in white.

With single twisted footside, this pattern takes 15 pairs of bobbins, including one pair of green threads, and one pair of whatever colour you want the flowers to be.

Fan flowers and roses

I enjoyed the half spiders from my cobweb pattern, and thought they looked a little like stalks of plants, so I tried to combine it with the first flower pattern. This time, I used rose ground between the flowers in the headside and the leaves. This seemed appropriate for a flower lace! Perhaps they are shorter flowers, or flowers in the background. The head side flowers are of two different sizes, since Twisted Fan headsides are larger than cloth fans with the same number of threads. They also give different effects. The single twisted footside is of brown thread, and represents the flower bed. This high lights the half spiders splendidly.

Again, this pattern takes 15 pairs of bobbins, including three pairs of brown, one pair of green and one pair of red thread (or whatever colour you want the flowers to be). You could make it all white, of course, but they might not look like flowers anymore.

Small honeycomb flowers

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.

Tally flowers

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.