Lace Notes	U n b r o k e n   T r a i l s
	Introduction	Half-Stitch Instructions	Cloth-Stitch Instructions

Torchon Corners with Unbroken Trails

Vibeke Ervø

Can you spot the difference between the corners in this Torchon sample?

The top left corner has a continuous trail of half stitch, whereas in the top right corner the flow of the half stitch is broken by a ‘ladder’, marked in yellow below.

Similarly for cloth stitch, the bottom left corner has a continuous trail, whereas the bottom right corner has a ladder.

Many Torchon patterns will look more pleasing if the trails are extended across the corners, instead of being divided by a ladder. When I was told that unbroken trails were not possible I took it as a challenge to devise a method of working them. When I had done this I was told that it would be impossible to teach this to others. This is my attempt to do so — only you will be able to tell whether I have succeeded!

The method involves adding extra pairs, but they are often needed anyway, e.g. for a row of rose ground on the corner line, in a similar way to some of the corners in Flemish lace, where two extra pairs are added. You may have old patterns that you would like to alter in this way, and below you will find links to instructions for unbroken trails, in both half stitch and cloth stitch (whole stitch), which first appeared in the 1989/4 and 1990/2 issues of the OIDFA bulletin. To make the description suitable for both the Continental and English way of working, I have avoided the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’, and instead used ‘inner’ as nearest to the footside and ‘outer’ as nearest to the headside.

A pdf version of this article is also provided for printing or reading with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

PDF version of Unbroken Trails

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