Half stitch zigzag
A zigzag headside is similar to a normal Torchon zigzag exccept pairs join and leave the zigzag only on the right side (the lace side). The left side (the edge of the lace) behaves more like an ordinary fan. See pattern 337.
Pattern representation of a zigzag headside (left) compared with a fan headside (right)
Working: I am not going to describe working a zigzag headside in detail. Click here to see how to do an ordinary fan, and click here for a zigzag.
I have seen this described as a Torchon headside, done in half stitch. I don't know whether it would work very well in cloth stitch, as the passives wouldn't get all the way out to the points of the zigzag, so the workers would be left by themselves to make a loop. There's a bit of a problem with this in half stitch!
There is an oddity to this, as a Torchon headside. Usually Torchon lace has a regular grid in the narrowest part of the lace, and spaces out the pairs in some way to make the broader parts (which is the bulge of the headside). However, this headside works more like a Bucks Point headside, as there has to be enough pairs in the widest part of the headside to fill out the point. This means that these extra pairs get squashed together in the narrowest part of the zigzag. You must take account of this when working out how many pairs there are in a pattern.
© Jo Edkins 2018 - return to lace index