A chevron or arrow is a solid shape common in Torchon lace. A chevron can point either up or down. A sideways chevron is a zigzag.
It can be worked in either cloth stitch or half stitch. The effect of the two are different, but they are worked the same except for the stitches.
Cloth stitch chevron pointing upwards. See pattern 27.
Pattern representation of a chevron pointing upwards
This pattern shows a narrow chevron pointing up. It is possible to have wider chevrons, such as in the photo, and the lengths can be as long or short as you want. I hope you can see how to adapt the following explanation for those.
The following 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 or half stitch.
A chevron pointing up starts with one worker, but when the shape splits into two, then it is necessary to have two workers. The diagram explains how many workers are in use at a particular point.
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Working: Work the lace above the chevron (such as ground). Do not work the edge pins of the chevron yet. In a chevron pointing up, you work rows of stitches. The first row, at the top of the chevron, is just a stitch between two pairs of bobbins. Chose one pair (it doesn't matter which) to be the worker pair, but remember the other pair, as it will become the second worker pair later. But it is just a pair of passives at the moment.
There are three stages to working this chevron. The first part is similar to the first half of a diamond - you work rows of increasing length, picking up one new pair at the end of each row, until you get down to the row where the chevron splits into two. The worker pair is at one edge of the row, and this will carry on working one arm of the chevron. But we need a second pair of workers for the other arm, and this will be the passive pair which came from the top point (I told you to remember it!) This should be in the middle of the other passives. Divide the passives into two, so the new worker pair is at the edge of one group. Put in a pin between this new worker and its passives. Now work that arm of the chevron using this second pair of workers. This is like a strip - you discard pairs inside the chevron as well as taking in pairs from the outside. Once that arm of the chevron is finished, you pick up the original pair of workers, and work the other arm using the rest of the passives.
There are various ways to select a second worker, and this just describes one way. But you should work enough rows before the split, or the top of the chevron will have a hole in it, and there should be the same number of passives in each arm of the chevron. This way certainly seems to work, and it is fairly easy to divide the passives into two, and to find the second worker pair.
© Jo Edkins 2016 - return to lace index
