I gave some suggestions as to how to start designing Torchon lace here. General principles for designing Torchon lace describes how the edges of Torchon lace, the headsides and footsides, involve triangles. But the middle of the lace is usually diamonds, or strips (stretched diamonds) or zigzags (strips joined together). So you can make a Torchon design by fitting together diamonds, and putting headside or footside at the edge. The next question is - what goes in the diamond shapes?
Lace stitches and shapes fit within diamonds or strips, but the main problem is how big a diamond. For the purpose of this page, I am only going to consider diamonds. I hope you can see how to extend the idea to strips. (If not, you'd better stick to diamonds!)
The first confusion is how big the diamond is. Look at the pink diamond area above. It is tempting to say that the shape is 6x6. However, the pink lines belong to the lace surrounding the diamond shape. Only the grey lines crossing into the middle of the diamond shape can actually be used. And there are 4x4 of those. If this sounds confusing, then look at the shape below. Here our diamond shape is surrounded by cloth stitch. Only the pairs that leave the cloth stitch may be used, and there are 4 on one side, and 4 on the other. So I will call this a 4x4 diamond shape.
Cloth and half stitch diamonds can fit into any diamond shape, as long as it is big enough. A 2x2 diamond is not a damond, it's just a squiggle in the lace! 3x3 diamond is the smallest that is recognisably a diamond. But as long as the cloth or half stitch diamond is 3x3 or bigger, you can have any size.
Now to consider grounds. If you look at the grounds index page, you will see that I have arranged them into groups. The top group is called "Simple grounds, using two pairs per unit". They use two pairs, one from the left and one from the right. So they fit in a 1x1 diamond shape. This means that you don't need to worry about how big (or small) the diamond shape is. These simple grounds will fit! In fact, it is true throughout Torchon lace that if you can't fit anything else in a place, and there's a gap in your design, fill it with simple ground such as Torchon ground. They will always fit. Very useful!
Now for the next group of grounds - "Grounds using four pairs per unit". This includes grounds such as rose ground. I am going to use rose ground as an example, but the same discussion will be true of these other grounds. These grounds fit into a 2x2 shape, or any even sides, such as 4x4, 6x6, 8x8, and so on. The example below shows rose ground fitting into 4x4.
But what happens if you want to fit rose ground into a odd number diamond shape, such as 5x5? The easy answer is "Don't!" Work out in advance that you are wanting to use rose ground, and try to keep all the diamond shapes as even numbers. You can use odd numbers, though. You can run lines of Torchon ground to fill in the gaps, where the rose ground won't fit. This can be the top two (diagonal) lines, or the left two, or the right two, or the bottom two. See below.
This makes an unsymmetrical pattern. You may dislike this! However, sometimes unsymmetrical patterns "work" within a larger design. Your choice!
You can put this spare line of Torchon ground elsewhere, though. You can put it through the middle of the diamond shape rather than at the edge. This works for a 5x5 shape. Each unit of rose ground has to do Torchon ground stitches before doing the rose ground below. This means that each unit has to do its own cross-overs - it can't share them with the rose ground below. It produces a different effect, but you might like it.
This works for 5x5, but it won't work for 7x7. This is because a 6x6 diamond shape would have 9 rose ground units, so the middle line of Torchon ground would have to go through the middle of rose ground units!
If you put a single line of Torchon ground between each unit of rose ground, then you get a ground that I call rose and line ground - follow the link to see how to do it. But this has its own problems. It will fit (nicely) in 5x5, 8x8, 11x11 and so on. (The formula is 3n-1.)
Or you could run Torchon ground round the outside as well. This will fit in 7x7, 10x10 and so on.
You could probably work out a combination of rose ground and Torchon ground to fit any diamond shape, but you might have to scratch your head a bit! Remember that all these techniques can also be used for similar sized grounds, such as triangular ground.
This discussion above is also relevant to more complex grounds such as star ground. This is described as "Grounds using more than four pairs per unit" in the grounds index page. The unit is only 2x2, but it has to have a line of Torchon ground separating the units to stop the stitches collapsing in on each other. You can have lines of Torchon ground just between the units, as below (which fits into 5x5, 8x8, 11x11, and so on) or you can have a line round the edge as well, like the rose ground above (and this will fit into 7x7, 10x10 and so on).
Now for spiders. In a way, spiders are easier, since there are different sized spiders. If you have a smallish diamond shape, 8 legged spider fits into 2x2, 12 legged spider fits into 3x3 and 16 legged spider fits into 4x4. For a 4x4, you can also have an 8 legged spider surrounded by Torchon ground. See below for the two 4x4 options
It gets more complicated if you have bigger diamond shapes. You could have a single spider still, and surround it with enough Torchon ground to fill the space. The problems arise if you try to have more than one spider - say 4. You expect spiders to have their legs spreading outwards from their bodies. If two spiders are next to each other (diagonally), then the legs between them don't spread out. Instead all the legs on one side of the body of the top spider go straight to the body of the other.
That produces a certain effect which you might like. I call this spider ground, and it works exactly the same as the other "Grounds using four pairs per unit", such as rose ground. That is, it fits within 2x2, 4x4, 6x6 and so on (if you are using 8 legged spiders).
You can separate the spiders with lines of Torchon ground. This not only means that you can fit different diamond shapes (5x5, 8x8, 11x11 and so on), but the Torchon ground separates the legs of the spiders, so they look like proper spiders! I call this spider and line ground.
Those two grounds use 8 legged spiders. You could do something similar with 12 legged spiders, and 16 legged spiders, but you'd need increasingly big diamond spaces.
© Jo Edkins 2019 - return to lace index