Cattern Lace

My aunt recently brought me a small Torchon lace butterfly in a frame which she had found in a charity shop. It measures around 8cm x 7cm and is worked in a variegated thread.

The techniques used include spiders, half stitch fans, whole stitch fans and Torchon ground. There was no name or details inside the frame so I was left in the dark about its origins or maker.
A few days later I was searching through my lace patterns and books for a pattern and came across a booklet called The Romance of Lace which accompanied the 1984 exhibition of the North West Lace Makers (of which I’m currently a member).

I had a flick through to see if there was anything of interest and there on page 28 was the very same butterfly pattern as the one in the frame. The only slight variation is that the photograph in the booklet contains two tallies on the butterflies wings which are not there on my version. Perhaps then the maker of my version had only the pattern grid to work from- or perhaps they just didn’t like tallies! It was designed by someone called Kath Wurbacher.

So of course I decided to make my own version of the butterfly. I used a DMC 80 Special Dentelles thread and a silver gimp thread. There’s probably not a real butterfly in the world with these colours but I like them together! Unfortunately I had a break between doing the two wings and there is a different stitch at the top of each wing, and in the picture below the antennae look a bit drunken, but nothing in nature is perfect, right?!? 😉

I took the booklet, the framed piece and my version to the April meeting of the North West group to see if anyone knew anything about it the original or had been at the exhibition but unfortunately nobody did. But 30 years after the pattern was published I’ve at least been able to bring it back to life.