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Twisted fan headside

Torchon fan

This page describes a twisted fan, which is worked in cloth stitch and twist, as opposed to a cloth or half stitch fan. See pattern 85.

A headside is a non-straight edge of lace. There is ground or other lace to the right. The twisted fans along the edge touch each other.

fan pattern
Pattern representation of a twisted fan

This pattern shows a twisted fan with sides of 4 pins. It is possible to have smaller or bigger fans. I hope you can see how to adapt the following explanation for those.

This diagram avoids the complexities of the individual stitches by showing each pair of threads as a single line. Where one line crosses another, you should work it in cloth stitch and twist.

The number below shows the number of pairs actually part of the twisted fan at each row. This number changes for different rows, and getting too many or too few pairs in a row is a common mistake.

Bobbin lace twisted fan

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Working: The working of a twisted fan is exactly the same as a fan, except every stitch is cloth stitch and twist (rather than cloth stitch or half stitch).

The different stitch makes the twisted fan look more open than the normal fans, with every stitch individually seen. It is harder to tighten. Cloth stitch and twist twists the pairs with every stitch, which means a lot of twisted threads to persuade to lie snugly if you tighten threads just at the end of rows. Click here for thread tightening techniques - you may wish to try some more sophisticated techniques than usual! Or you can tighten more than just at the end of each row.

However, using cloth stitch and twist has the advantage that shaping the twisted fan needs less effort. The stitches are pushed further apart, so the edge of the headside happens more where it should, rather than drifting towards the centre of the lace.

All fans are asymmetrical if there are the same number of pinholes along the left edge as the right edge. Some patterns give one fewer hole on the left edge (the edge of the lace), and that means that the fan is symmetrical. However, that required the lacemaker to remember which direction the workers should move for the first row. If you get it wrong, you run out of pins on the left side! If there are the same number of rows, both the directions work. So my patterns tend to have the same number of rows. You can alter them if you wish. This asymmetry is more noticeable for twisted fans.

Sometimes 'twisted fan' is used to mean the headside which I call scallop.

These small twisted fans can be quite hard to spot.

Twisted fan

This is a small twisted fan, but one of the passives has left the fan at a different angle to normal, and is a different colour. The edge pair and the workers are the same colour. However, if you ignore that, and just concentrate on the actual stitches, the rows, and the shape of the fan, you will see that it is, indeed, a small twisted fan.