Click here for corner patterns.
A bobbin lace edging to a mat can take a long time to work. A piece of lace sewn onto a corner is a much quicker way to decorate a mat. The simplest way is a triangle, either taken from a strip or from a corner. This page covers more complicated shapes.
Here is a corner using a Bucks Point grid. It is the same as half a hexagonal mat.
You turn the pillow twice while working the piece, as each part is only 60° rather than Torchon's 90°. The Bucks Point grid makes it natural to use Bucks Point style patterns. Even better, since there are three parts to the corner, the central part is in the middle of the corner, so you can make it a feature by placing anything you want in the middle. The two 'dead' lines run up to the points, on either side. The outer edge of this corner is more rounded than the point of a Torchon corner (top of this page), but that is an attractive effect as well.
The sewing, as usual, is along the long edge:
Triangles with one section or two sections are covered elsewhere. It is also possible to have three sections:
This is three quarters of a mat, working each section down to the dark grey line, then turning the pillow to work the next section. You just stop earlier! Here is the pattern:
The sewing is different to the triangles. Rather than sewing along the long edge, you fit the corner of the mat or handkerchief into the missing part of the lace. This means that the lace sticks out beyond the natural edge of the mat (or handkerchief).
The advantage of doing a corner with three sections rather than two is that the centre of the pattern is a whole section rather than the boundary between two sections.
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index