Disillusion is the second piece in Idealism, a three-part bobbin lace artwork that moves from the illusion of perfection toward reality. After creating Utopia in Flanders lace, I wanted the second piece to look almost the same, but something needed to feel not quite right.

The word disillusion means the feeling of disappointment when an illusion or high expectation fades. That was exactly what I wanted this piece to represent. The ideal hasn’t completely fallen apart, but the flaws are harder to ignore.

Translating Flanders into Torchon

I used the exact same floral pattern from Utopia for Disillusion. Instead of making it in Flanders, I translated the design into Torchon lace. This is the type of lace I’ve designed and made the most.

The pattern itself needed only a few changes. The Flanders ground became Torchon ground, and instead of planning the complicated close work inside each flower, I drew in the back-and-forth paths for Torchon cloth stitch trails. Visually, the flowers remained the same. Structurally, the two types of lace work very differently. I used Gutermann silk, my go-to thread for Torchon. It has a beautiful finish and is easy to work with.

Making the Flowers Almost Right

When I converted the flowers to cloth stitch, I deliberately designed the trails so they wouldn’t fill the petals correctly.

Normally, I would extend the pinholes all the way to the gimp outline to create a full area of cloth stitch. For Disillusion, I stopped most of them short. This left small holes between the cloth stitch and the outline of the flowers.

From a distance, the flowers still seem like the flowers in Utopia. When you look closer, the cloth stitch doesn’t quite fill the shapes the way you would expect. It is recognizable as the original design, but something is clearly off.

Creating Glitches

I wanted another type of imperfection running through Disillusion, inspired by the tracking glitches you sometimes see on a television when a horizontal section of the image shifts sideways.

I started with the completed Torchon pattern and brought it into Photoshop. I selected an entire horizontal row of pinholes and shifted it either left or right. I repeated the process in several places, experimenting with different configurations until the glitches looked random without making the pattern impossible to work. That balance was important. I didn’t want to destroy the lace. I wanted the pattern to remain functional while looking slightly wrong.

The shifts were small enough that I could follow the altered pinholes normally while making the lace. The stitches simply followed the glitch, moving an entire section of the design sideways before returning to where it belonged.

A Much Easier Piece to Make

Torchon uses far fewer bobbins than Flanders. While Utopia required 288 bobbins, Disillusion needed only 148.

After managing Utopia, having so few bobbins loose on the pillow felt incredibly freeing, and bobbin management was a breeze. The lace itself was also much easier to make. Torchon is familiar, Gutermann silk is one of my favorite materials to work with, and I didn’t need the intense concentration required for Flanders close work.

Even the purposeful imperfections made the process easier. I didn’t have to worry about getting every cloth stitch area perfectly dense or making sure it extended to the edge. For once, those problems were part of my plan.

Something Isn’t Quite Right

Placed beside Utopia, Disillusion initially looks like the same piece of lace. The flowers follow the same arrangement, the composition has the same proportions, and the overall design is intact. Then you start to notice things. The flowers don’t fill their outlines correctly. A section of the lace suddenly shifts sideways. The longer you look, the easier it becomes to see what looks like mistakes.

That is Disillusion. The illusion of perfection established in Utopia hasn’t disappeared yet, but it is becoming harder to believe.

Next comes Reality, where the rules begin to fall apart completely.

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