Torchon Lace


Most people who embark on the lifelong study of handmade lace-making start by making Torchon lace, as it is generally regarded as the most simple pattern. It is thought to have been invented in the nineteenth century as a lace designed to be made quickly and to be used around the home for trimming clothing. The designs are always geometric with regular patterns of squares, triangles and rectangles minus the frills of many other kinds of lace. This makes for a very strong fabric which withstands wear and washing better than more delicate laces and so was often used to trim muslin and heavy linen garments. It has a long history but sadly pre-twentieth century pieces are hard to find. Historians remain divided as to why torchon lace is so called. In French ‘torchon’ means ‘duster’ or ‘rag’ and some argue that this name was given to it as it was a poor man’s cheap lace and not particularly prized. However, the French word for twist is ‘torsion’, distorted in some parts of France to ‘torchon’. The name could refer to the way the lace is made with a half stitch, pin, half stitch and a twist at each end.

The lace is based on a rectangular grid and pricked at an angle of 45 or 90 degrees. Although the pattern is one that a novice can master quite quickly, it is often embellished with more complicated patterns by more experienced lacemakers. The same pattern can be scaled up or down to make it more or less complicated. Simple curves in wholestitch, halfstitch or twisted stitch are often incorporated to soften the overall effect and motifs such as spiders, fans and palmettes and leaves are sometimes added. The design means that a whole range of headside edgings can be used other than the simple fans and tails in cloth stitch or half stitch. There are also a wide range of grounds which can be used including the three basic grounds and the rose ground in twelve versions. In some Scandinavian countries torchon lace has even more variations and the lacemakers have introduced outlining threads to further enhance the design.