Color codes
Various dialects of color codes for pair diagrams are used by bobbin lace designers: There is at least a Belgian version, a simplified Danish version and a red-blue version and perhaps more. These dialects use just one color per stitch what accommodates at most about half a dozen of stitches.
These systems have in common that only one color represents a stitch. These are easy to draw by hand and sufficient for traditional styles of bobbin lace. When experimenting with unorthodox stitches and grounds we need to distinguish more than those half a dozen of colors.
2x2swatches serves as a reminder: the color numbers are arranged in a clockwise order starting with red (=danger alias unusual) as zero.
4 colors per stitch
This page explains how GroundForge uses up to four colors per stitch to distinguish up to four crosses per stitch and up to three twists between those crosses, as well as tallies and plain plaits. If we count mirrored versions of stitches, the color code can distinguish over 4K separate stitches. It does have one drawback: the approach may be too elaborate to draw accurately by hand.
Twists
| none | one | two | more | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| twists between stitches | ||||
| twists between crosses |
Colors for the twists fill blank shapes in the following table.
Crosses
| 1. just a single cross | |
| 2. cross - twist(s) - cross | |
| 3. cross - twist(s) - cross - twist(s) - cross | |
| 4. cross - twist(s) - cross - twist(s) - cross - twist(s) - cross; e.g. brussels stitch: ctct-pin-ctct or winkie pins | |
ctctctc and longer plaits |
|
cllcrrcllc and longer or mirrored tallies |
|
 |
none of the above |
Examples
The following examples combine the color rules relating to twists with the shapes representing the crosses.
Note that each t of the captions is translated into an l plus r in the drawings.
The sampler by Gertrude Whiting has some interesting examples illustrating the four colors per stitch in practice: E12, A2. F9. Below a variation of F9 to show the difference between the tick marks for double and triple twists. The pattern shows also variations of winkie pins.
Notes
The color scheme was selected from colorbrewer because of its color-blind friendly properties.
Not having twists between stitches encoded in the colors of the stitches, makes the diagrams agnostic to the open (start with twist) and close (end with twist) method. The tooltip when hovering over a stitch may have the twist one either one of the stitches.