Swirly Turtle

 Swirly Turtle

I designed this little turtle to practice the Idrija corners and bar techniques.   I cannot call it 'Idrija' because the lace is a protected name, so I can only say I used those techniques as best I can. 

Five to six pairs.  Idrija 30 thread, or any good cotton at 30 wraps per centimeter.  The gold thread is about 16 wraps per centimeter, a crochet thread about number 20 perhaps.    Lay the threads inside the trail, if they fit nicely, then they are the right size.  If they go outside the lines, either reduce the size of the thread. You need a minimum of 4 passive pairs so lay 8 threads inside the lines.  

Start at the arrow shown near the tail.  This leads you to work the inside swirl before making the outer edges and avoids working over too many pins. 

I wanted to create a piece using lots of bars.  The tensioning issues created left me with asymetrical sewings, despite using the same number of twists, obviously I haven't quite got the hang of them yet!

The outside edge was made using two worker pairs, I had hoped that this would give a smooth, more turtle like appearance but it does tend to push the passives towards the inside of the trail.  I would prefer to use a thick passive thread and place the pin inside the worker and the thick thread.   There are lots of different edges, just use which one you like.   

The whole turtle is just one trail.  The center passive pair, the thick gold glitter, has two passives one side, and one passive the other, this meant I had to move a passive across to make the corners to avoid using the thick gold in the fixing stitches.

There are two sizes, the larger one allows for using a thicker thread, or you can just use more passives to fit the trail.  

There are no pinholes marked in this pattern, you can choose if you want the outer trail to be worked with pinholes closely worked, or spread out.  With the thick thread, the wider pinholes do work quyite nicely.