How to Find Lace Knitting Stitch Patterns

Finding the perfect stitch pattern for your next lace project can be intimidating, especially if you don’t know where to start. Let me help you by providing a compilation of resources for finding lace knitting stitch patterns!

The Complete Guide to Lace Knitting: Table of Contents

There are two common ways for finding stitch patterns for lace knitting: Books and other publications, or looking online. You can even create your own, but that’s another story (and complicated enough for another article series). Let’s focus on books and online stitch pattern libraries for the moment.

Books for Lace Stitch Patterns

Some people call them pattern books, others stitch dictionaries or stitchionaries: Books dedicated to knitting stitch patterns. I collected a few (okay, maybe more than just a few) over the last years and I love browsing through them for inspiration. Although there are many books dedicated to stitch patterns out there, some of them are considered to be classics and should have a reserved spot on every designer’s bookshelf.

The most prominent books for stitch patterns – not only lace stitch patterns – are the following:

Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (four volumes).

For Orenburg lace knitting stitch patterns Galina Khmeleva’s book Gossamer Webs is the number one resource, and so is Sharon Miller’s Heirloom Knitting for Shetland lace shawls.

When it comes to Estonian lace knitting there’s a standard reference book, too: Leili Reiman’s Pitsilised Koekirjad.

It’s in Estonian but comes with charts for each stitch pattern so it’s quite easy to use (at least if you like working with charts). It’s quite hard to find, though – I got mine on Ebay years ago and the print and binding are of poor quality.

But hey, it’s been printed in the 1980’s in the former Soviet Union –  I am not complaining. Especially if you consider the lovely 80s style pictures inside.

I own quite a few pattern books for Alpine Knitting and they’re all gorgeous, but my all-time favorite is still Oma’s Strickgeheimnisse (Grandma’s Knitting Secrets) by Eichenseer, Grill, and Krön.

Free Online Resources for Lace Knitting Stitch Patterns

My number one online resource for finding lace knitting stitch patterns is Pinterest. As stitch patterns are such a visual thing obviously, a visual search engine – and nothing else is Pinterest – is the best choice.

If you want to learn more about how to find stitch patterns online have a look at my earlier article Finding Inspiration (And Stitch Patterns, Too).