Discovering Crochet Lace

    How do you feel about going on an adventure, a voyage of discovery? I have a vague itinerary in mind but I'm not sure exactly where we are going or what we will find along the way.

    We've been talking about Crochet Lace recently, here at ThePulledStitch HQ. Questions have been asked to which I have no answers. I have searched in my trusty library and found it to be lacking. I have scoured the Internet and got even more frustrated. Why is this so?

    There are many in the crochet establishment that would have you believe that crochet arrived fully formed some time in the 18th Century. One of the biggest drivers in it's popularity being Irish Lace. But there are dissenting voices and the truth is probably that all the fibre arts are so closely linked that they cannot be separated. There is also another difficulty in that we still live in a largely patriarchal Eurocentric society. Why is a woven fabric more highly prized than a knitted or crocheted one? Is it because the men were the weavers and the women the spinners? After all an unmarried woman used to be referred to as a Spinster. And while it might be true that crochet came to prominence in the Victorian era. It's also true that evidence of it's ancient ancestor, nålebinding, has been found all over the globe.

    Scouring my crochet books I find very little in reference to 'lace'. If I were to believe what I was seeing I would believe that the only types of crochet lace were Filet, Hairpin and Irish. I would believe that crochet lace is for making doilies, bedspreads and lace edgings. Lace fabrics are, I find, called 'Open work' or 'Mesh' and 'Filet'. It's almost as if we don't want to utter the words Crochet and Lace together!

    My own theory of what is happening here is based on my own aversion to Granny Squares! In my no doubt faulty memory, chunky, vibrant granny squares were everywhere in the 1970's. I have indelibly linked them with flairs, wide lapels, long sideburns and power cuts! From perhaps the 1960's our parents threw off oppressive Irish Lace, tiny hooks and cotton thread. Instead they seized chemical dyes and man made textiles.

    Admittedly, using mainly Therese De Dilmont's 1886 Encyclopedia of needlework to base my theories on there were many types of crochet lace. These set about replicating the appearance of needle and bobbin lace. If you can find a style of lace work you can find a crochet mimic. Hand made laces are fiddly and time consuming. They required specialist tools, frames, preparations and knowledge. How much quicker and easier to dash off a yard or two of crochet lace with nothing more than a hook and thread.

    So on our journey we will look at different types of needle and bobbin lace and their crochet equivalents. We shall experiment with yarn and hook sizes and see where it takes us. Hopefully we will bring a few souvenirs back with us to the 21st Century!

    To kick off the 'season' I have re written a pattern I found in Therese De Dilmont's book. Wikisource assures me that this book is now out of copyright. It is also true to say that many of the patterns in this book were 'borrowed' from contemporary publications in the first place. I am starting to recognise that when she says, the authors 'can assure our readers from personal experience', she means she has made the pattern but in most cases has not! Indeed, if you attempt to make this pattern from the original instructions you will run into some difficulty!

Leaf Lace

     So here is an adaptable Leaf Lace. It can be used as an edging with just one row of leaves, or with several rows of leaves, or even as a fabric with as many rows as required and without the edging. We are advised to make the pattern in DMC Pearl Cotton nos 5 & 8. Who would have thought that nearly 140 years later we can still make it in the exact same thread.

    We start by making the leaves in the heavier weight yarn, and them join them with a net of picots in the finer weight, and finish with the header.

I'm using DMC Cotton Perlé No5, Colour 3346 for the leaves and No8, Colour 760 to join.

 

    ...so that was the plan,

 

        ...but here here is what happened!

 

    The pattern is concise, to say the least. I already knew it had some glaring errors but not quite how glaring they really were! Here you will find my PDF attempt to update the pattern and fill in the glaring errors. Feel free to compare it to the original if you have the book or redesign it so that it actually works!

    The very first problem with these patterns is that they are lacking all the information we now take for granted. We have been given the yarn type and weight but not the hook size or the gauge. I have suggested a 2mm for the leaves and 1.5mm for the lace.

    The leaves are very easy, made in two rounds... 

But scroll back to that lithograph illustration above, the leaves look completely different!

They join together in a row like this and I think you can already see the problem emerging. One of the first problems I encountered was the 'Picot'. The instructions read (Dc,Picot,Dc) [US-(Sc,Picot,Sc)] in the same stitch.  We are not told how many chains to use or how they should be joined. So in my pattern version I have just used an open Chain4, creating the loop between the two Dc. I re-read my own post about Picots, and even I had forgotten how many different variants there are! I chose the open style of this picot because the thread is so fine and makes it easier to join into, in further rows.

Now the rows are joined together. The instructions begin at the end of the little stalk which meant that the ends of the rows were left partially suspended. I have attempted to fill in the missing part of the pattern. Indeed, I am not sure that I got it quite right.

Finally the heading is added. Once again any instructions for the ends of the rows are missing.

    From the base of the stalk to the tip of the middle leaf lobe is 7cm. It seems to me that the size of this edging makes it unsuitable for any purpose that I can imagine, but I think it would work best as a single row design.

Inevitably, I decided that it would require a complete redesign, in which case it would no longer be the Victorian pattern at all!

Next month, shall we do something simple, just for a change?

fastening off...