Torchon bookmark project

Haize · Torchon bookmark project

Part one:

For some reason, most lace seems to still be done all in white, with the decoration being purely in the variety of complex knots. However, I've made a simple design in terms of the difficulty of the stitches, but made it prettier with a little colour.

You will need:
Pillow
20 bobbins
Piece of thin card (approx 3" x 8")
Two pieces of cloth (aprpox 6" x 18")
Thread, in three colours
Lots and lots of pins!

The pillow needs to be quite firm, and about 16" in diameter. It can easily be made by getting a round piece of thin board, putting about 3" of straw on top, and covering with cloth. The shape is supposed to be roughly flat across most of it, sloping away only near the edges. Mine is slightly domed all over though, and it does ok.

I guess you could use pens as bobbins: If it is the type with a lid with clip on, take the lid off, wind thread around the pen in the area that will be covered by the clip, then put the lid back on. When you hang the pen from the loose end, it should not unwind. You must, however, be able to intentionally unwind it as your work takes up the slack.

Bobbins need to be wound in pairs - take a piece of thread about 6' long, and wind just under half onto one bobbin and just under half onto the other. Leave about 8" of string between the two. You need two of these done in one colour, two done in another, and the remaining 8 bobbin pairs done in white.

The card is for you to transfer the pattern onto: Print out the pattern, lay it on top of the card and secure in place, then poke a pin through the card at every one of the dots on the pattern. These little holes will be where you put the pins to hold your lace in its pattern. Place the pattern slightly above centre on your cushion, and pin in place at the corners.

[I'll post the pattern when I have found batteries for the mouse, so I can actually draw it!]

Edit: The pattern is shown later, in part 3. You need spacing of about 7mm between dots that are in line horizontally or vertically. The other ones are just centrally placed in the gaps. It may be easier just to draw a grid out than to print it to scale!

The two pieces are cloth are not majorly important, but are handy. The first goes over the pattern card, lower than you are working, to stop bobbins and thread catching on the edges of the card, or the pins with which you secure it. Your bobbins will sit on top of this. The second is for when you need to abandon the work for a bit: You lay it over the bobbins to protect them. Obviously it is no good against dropping the cushion, but it does stop the bobbins getting messed up quite so easily.

You need at least 40 pins, the more the better (so you don't have to take them out from the higher up lace to continue working). The ones with tiny heads (usually brass) seem to be favoured by lace makers, probably because, with so many, they obscure things less than the blobby ended ones.

Part two awaits me finding the camera data cable...

Leonie2

does the cushion need to be round? I have a rectangle cushion that would probably be firm enough.

Haize

That would be fine. If you make a curved piece of lace, say, for a collar, you need to be able to turn the board a lot, which is why they're normally round. This will just go straight down, so it's ok.

Haize

Part 2:

Here is a cushion, with the pattern card, and a finished piece of lace:

And a closer photo of the lace:

There are only two different stitches used in this; Whole stitch and twist, and Torchon stitch. These are always done on two adjacent pairs of bobbins, i.e. one from the stitch on the row above to the left, and one from the right. Both of these are made up of combinations of "crosses" and "twists". It's nice and simple: For a cross, take the middle two bobbins of the four, and cross left over right. For a twist, take right over left on both the left hand and right hand pairs of bobbins. Because these are always done the same, cross is abbreviated to "C", and twist to "T"

Whole stitch, which I've done most of the bookmark in (because it is easier to keep tidy!), is done by repeating "cross, twist" twice, putting a pin in, then "cross, twist" twice again.

This is a picture taken after doing "CTCT":

Pick up left and right hand pairs, and pull apart to tighten a little (just to move the knot up slightly). Now push a pin up in the V created between the bobbin pairs, until you reach a hole in your pattern. Push in the pin, then take the bobbin pairs and pull gently until any loops are gone. Now do CTCT again:

And after this it is pulled up tight:

Once you have done this stitch, the pair of bobbins that were coming in from the left have now gone back off out to the left, i.e. your pairs have not now crossed over. If the whole pattern was made with just this stitch, the coloured strings would just zig-zag between two vertical rows of holes on your pattern.

Torchon stitch is half as much work, but a little messier until the row below is done. When it is finished, the left hand pair of bobbins from above has become the right hand pair below, so this is used to make the coloured lines travel "straight on" at a pin.

Do CT just once:

Put a pin into the V between the middle two bobbins, and slide up until it can be put into the pattern:

CT once again:

This stitch will misbehave and stay messy until you catch the threads up into the the next row down. This is why I've only used it where necessary to get the desired pattern with the colours! Should you need to stop part way through making the lace, it would be a good idea to try to avoid that being right after a row with this stitch in, though this isn't critical.

Kathy

And I thought using my bead loom was fiddly!

Looks really good you clever thing you, I will have a go when I catch up with my other projects. Very Happy

Haize

Part 3:

Work in general is done by going across left to right, doing all the stitches on a level with each other, then working back right to left on the row below. The only reason for this is that, after doing the stitches on the first of the rows, you can put the "done with" bobbins quite a way out to the left, giving yourself room to work. When you get to the next row, you already have lots of space available at the right, so use it, and this time, put the used bobbins out to the right as far as possible without making the work look untidy.

There are conventions for how a pattern is marked, but because this is using only two types of stitch, I have drawn a rather simplified form of pattern:

A black dot represents Whole Stitch & Twist, red dots represent Torchon Stitch. I used mostly white thread, in the positions of the grey lines, and green and blue threads where shown. Because the blue threads are forming the straight edge, the stitches with them will look a little different, as the bobbin pairs will meet at a different angle. Don't worry about this, it will neaten out as you go, just to the normal stitches.

Haize

It really isn't as bad as it looks, Kathy! Well, not with this simple pattern! Some of them must be horrific, with 80 bobbins or whatever... It was a case of trying to beat the machines: as people built equipment to make better and better lace, the people doing it by hand tried to overcome the loss of business by doing things too complicated for the machines. Then better machines were developed, and the designs became utterly ridiculous Laughing

Anyway... nearly done...

Part 4:

At the very start, exactly the same stitches are still needed in order to stop the top unravelling. However, it can be a bit tricky to see what is going on, so I'd suggest taking two pins, placing them just off the top of your pattern, and hooking the two bobbin pairs you are about to use over these. Do a stitch as normal, but when finished, pull out the two top pins, keeping your fingers on the now loose loop at the top, and gently pull out all the slack with the bobbins. Just be careful not to let anything jump over the pin you've put in your pattern!

Working from left to right, the first pairs I used were blue & white, then white & white, green & green, white & white, and lastly white & blue.

It is possible to take pins out from further up your work, if you are short of them. However, if less than about an inch of work is secured, you risk pulling bits out of shape whilst tightening the stitches you are on. If you need to take pins out, leave the ones down the edges and across the top. Work in progress should look something like this:

At the end, repeat CT several times over with the four bobbins at each pin. This will make a braid. Make the edge ones a little longer than the centre ones, so that you can bring them all together to a point. Cut your bobbins loose, leaving enought thread to keep hold of, and tie a single knot in the end. This is a little different to what is shown on mine, but that was really annoying to do, and is not very neat!

When you go to remove all the pins from your finished work, bear in mind that as there are less and less pins, the risk of snagging and ruining the lace increases, so when there is space to do so, press your fingers on the lace near to each pin as you pull it out.

It isn't as delicate as it looks!

There, finished. Sorry about the huge pictures, if it is a problem I can redo them? Our temporary computer setup is not user friendly!

Becki

I'm with Kathy
Shocked

mrutty

Yes but I think I can see a new www.thecardbee.com product line. Bobbins (not lace as I couldn't put up with the swearing when it went wrong).

Leonie2

Thanks for all your hard work Haize Very Happy

I'm definitely going to give that a try, but first I'll need to find some bobbins, I wonder if wooden pegs might work? Otherwise I'll see what I can find.

Cabbagepatch

A friend of mine does lacemaking and its something I would like to try................but after reading those destructions Haize.......... Confused

Not sure I have the time or patience just now. Leonie, Good Luck, and look forward to seeing the results.

Away now to self destruct in 10 seconds Laughing

Haize

I promise it's not hard, or complicated! I'm just not always so good at being concise... Confused