Lace Footsides

Every piece of lace has two edges. Of course, it has a start and end as well, but these are not usually part of the design. When working the lace, you position the pattern so that the two edges are to the left and right. The straight edge is the footside. The wavy, or frilly edge is the headside.

In English lace the footside is usually worked on the right. (There is no particular reason to do this, and European lace usually has the footside worked on the left.) The footside is straight and quite strong, because this is where the lace to sewn onto whatever it is decorating, such as a handkerchief.

Twisted Footside

The threads are shown in different colours, so you can see what's happening. The grey threads are called the passives. They stay parallel to the edge of the lace. All the other threads come from the main pattern and return to it. At any one time, you have three pairs of bobbins, a pair at the edge on the right, the passives and a pair coming in from the pattern on the left. Work the left pair through the passive pair and the right pair, both times with cloth stitch and twist. Then pin between the passive pair, now on the left, and the other two pairs. The original left pair is now on the edge. Give it an extra twist and leave it alone. Work the old edge pair back through the passive pair into the pattern, again with cloth stitch and twist. The moving picture on the right demonstrates one row of footside (click on button to repeat it). The diagram on the left gives two rows of footside, so you can see how a pair of threads comes to the edge, stays there a row, and then works its way back.

The diagram above also shows one stitch of Torchon ground to demonstrate how the footside fits into the main lace. This could be any other stitch. Sometimes the footside is attached to the rest of the lace with double Torchon ground. This has the effect of keeping the two pairs of footside threads separate from the rest of the pattern. So if you wanted, you could make them a different colour.

The hearts lace has twisted footside. The diamond mat has twisted footside attached with a double Torchon ground.

Cloth Footside

A cloth footside has two pairs of passive bobbins that stay parallel to the edge (the grey ones in the pattern). It is similar to the twisted footside (above) except you work a pair of bobbins in cloth footside stitch through the both pairs of passives. The passives are not twisted, but the worker and edge bobbins are. This means you must remember which pair of bobbins to twist and which to leave alone.

This footside needs an extra pair, which means more bobbins to handle on the pillow, and more stitches to work. Generally, you can use twisted footside or cloth footside as you wish, although certain methods of lace may prefer one or the other.

The fan headside has cloth footside.

Double Twisted Footside

You can have more complicated types of footside by increasing the number of passives. If you prefer a twisted footside, then you can have two passives (see diagram on the left) or three (see right), or even more if you wish. This makes the footside into a pattern in itself, a border running alongside the normal lace. Remember that each extra passive means one more pair of bobbins to add to your collection on your pillow. If you have several passives, you may also need extra room on the pattern to allow room for them (and this will add to the width of your lace, of course). English Maltese lace likes these extra passives, and that is a more fluid lace than Torchon, which tends to expect every pinhole to be in its expected place!

Triple cloth footside

You can have a more complicated form of cloth footside by having three pairs of passives (which don't get twisted, of course). See left for the diagram. You can easily extend it to as many passives as you want, although you will have to start allowing more room in the pattern for them, and you will have to cope with the extra bobbins that they involve.

This type of footside will look like a thin strip of woven cloth running along one edge of the lace.

Sometimes lacemakers used to make their lace wider by working a thin strip of lace, such as the beginners pattern, and then sewing it to the footside of a wider piece of lace, making it look as if it had a complicated footside. The width of a piece of lace is usually limited by how many bobbins you can handle on a pillow (or how many you own!) so this is a neat trick.

Footside for threading ribbon

This is a very complicated footside! It has large holes in it to thread a ribbon. The pairs of threads making this are just twisted enough times to span the gap, then joined in a double Torchon ground stitch. There are two pairs of cloth passives either side of the ribbon holes. The edge of the lace is rather like the part twisted fan headside. In fact, there is no swapping over of pairs at the edge at all, unlike the simpler footsides above, yet this is obviously a footside.

On the left, the diagram mostly shows each pair of threads as separate colours. The exceptions are the passives, in pink (all four pairs), and in dark green on the left, the Torchon ground stitches that belong to the main part of the lace.

If this is too complicated for you, you could still adapt the idea if you wanted to thread a ribbon through your lace.