Color codes

The Belgian color code and similar systems are designed for traditional styles of bobbin lace. When experimenting with unorthodox stitches and grounds we need more than half a dozen of colors for a universal legend.

Depending on the context, these icons:
may lead to a page explaining one of the color code systems (one color versus four colors per stitch), or provide enumerations of the stitches used in a pattern. For publishing purposes, you can use third party software to merge the downloads of a pattern and an enumeration. The 2x2 icon 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.

The pair diagrams based on thread diagrams still apply a variation of the Belgian color-code with buggy numbers of twist marks.

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.