Valenciennes lace was a fine lace using a large number of bobbins. This pattern does not pretend to be a proper Valenciennes pattern! It does use Valenciennes ground.
Pattern:
Bobbins: 30 pairs
Style: Valenciennes (sort of!)
Stitches:
cloth stitch
half stitch
plait
picot
twist pair
Details:
Valenciennes ground (pale blue)
flower (red)
8 legged spider (green)
picots and passives headside (grey and pink)
Description:
Follow the links above for explanation of how to work the different parts of the lace. The Valencienes ground is made of plaits which join at the pin. I did three cloth stitch and twist for each plait (which is equivalent to six half stitches).
The join is not a lazy join like Midland lace. Instead the middle two pairs are worked half stitch, pin, half stitch. The outer two pairs are not involved in the join at all, so tightening all threads is vital. If you tighten them as hard as possible, you get the diamond pattern of the ground. There is something called rounded Valenciennes, and I suspect you'll get this if you don't tighten as much! But you'd need to do it all over the ground the same. Also altering the nature of the join in various ways, or making the plait with less stitches would also alter the look of the ground. I've used a Torchon grid for this. If the angles of the grid were different it would also alter the look of the ground.
Valenciennes lace had flowers, so I put my flowers in the pattern! The pattern above looks a bit different to the explanation, as the gaps between the petals are closer together, but logically they are the same. The important thing is that the top two petals must be worked together, as after every 4 rows, the workers must be worked across each other, pin, and back again, to join the petals together. The same applies to the bottom two petals. The side petals can be worked alone. The gap between the petals half-way down the flower are horizontal edges. The centre of the flower is a spider.
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index