rings for RPL / battenberg lace / irish crochet

Romanian point lace, battenberg (battenburg) lace and Irish crochet lace all traditionally use rings in the lace. I am going to show a few ways of making these rings. There are 5 examples in this tutorial. This will help those in the Jan 2012 RPLA on Ravelry and of course any one else who wants to learn this like those in the flickr group. I will have another tutorial later with 2 more ways of making rings

Click photo go to flickr for notes on rings / plastic bead and plastic cabone rings

battenberg with thread  rings

flickr group

plastic cabone rings last one ( on right)  is a bead I use as a cabone ring

These first three ways use a cabone ring and a crochet hook

metal ring

plastic ring/ size 10 thread

Cabone rings come in all kinds of sizes: 2 inch, 1 1/2, 1 1/8, 1, 7/8,3/4, 5/8, 1/2 I am sure they come in more but those are teh sizes I own.  Usually you can find them at your craft or yarn shoppe as stitch markers.  Buy enough for what ever project you are doing I suggest putting them in a ziplock bag once opened with a label on the bag written with  permanent marker so encase you need more of that size you have it  on the bag and what company to buy again as they do very from company to company.  I have used flat open centered round beads for this too, the last cabone ring in the photo is actually a flat bead.  I have even used just random metal rings I have found when they are the right size for my project 1 thing to think about with metal rings is they oxidize so be aware of that thus the color I chose for the thread on that one.  Cabone rings a hundred years ago were made out of cattle bone hence the name now days they are plastic.

• cabone centered ring ( sc ring) with crochet hook ( see photo above left)

attach thread to hook

join to cabone by going through the middle of the cabone ring

sc all the way around

the ring join with sl stitch or weave together with needle if you want a thicker ring you can either use thicker thread or cord inside or you could just crochet around the whole ring again and again to get to the desired thickness (not pictured)

cut and finish thread or leave the tail long to use to attach to lace piece

• cabone centered ring ( sc ring) with crochet hook (multiple rings joined together) 

Do all the same steps as above till you get to the slip stitch do not do that. count the number of stitches as you go make note of how many it took

*Join to new ring (because I want to go in a straight line I need to put half the amount on the first ring on this ring.** repeat this as many times as needed

When you get to the spot you want to turn in this case a 90 degree angle I want to put only 1/4 of the original stitchs on the first ring on this ring

Now do a straight row again as above when you get to the last ring fill it full of single crochet stitches

 

come up the other side of the rings making sure to put a slip stitch around the space between rings.

 

end with a sc in the first ring then slip stitch  leave long tail to work into lace or cut and weave tail in

This made a V shape like flying geese if you just need a graceful arch like the one in this pattern you just do the straight line effect and there is enough play in it to get that graceful arch.

cabone rings size 20 thread

bead cabone ring size 10 thread

Here you see two versions of the rings joined together one is a V shape like flying geese and the other more in a cluster like a star there are other ways of grouping them like in grape clusters and things of that sort.  Play with it and have fun.

The next one is  thread centered and a crochet hook

• thread centered ring  ( sc ring) with crochet hook

This is done the same way as the cabone ring except you have to pad the center of the ring with thread.  For the tutorial I am winding around the end of an ink pen but you could use the end of the crochet hook or a knitting needle or what ever you want that will give you the size center you want also wrap as many times as you want to get to the size of padding you want.

Carefully remove the bundle from the pen of thread keeping it pinched between your fingers

 

 insert crochet hook threw the middle of it bring up a loop from the thread attached to the ring make a slip stitch

start crocheting around the ring

go all the way around and finish as you did on the other rings above

Finally the last three are using a needle with both cabone center and a padded thread center.

Antique thread padded rings with blanket stitching with a needle

• thread centered ring grape style bullion stitch with needle

Make a thread center just as show above

but cut the tail real long ( about 1 yard) and attache to a millinery needle

to it working bullion stitches just as you would in fabric except go threw the center of the ring all the way around the ring.

 

till it is full  weave tail into ring cut and finish

• Thread centered ring blanket stitches with needle ( see picture above of antique rings)

Make a thread center just as show above but cut the tail real long ( about 1 yard) and attache a millinery needle

 

work around the ring doing a blanket stitch

till the ring is full

weave in tail at the end

Another way is to crochet bullion grapes see link below

•   bullion stitch with crochet hook ( since there is already a good tutorial out there for this I am just going to link to it.)