Daisy looming is an off-shoot from the more complex Teneriffe lace that was popular in the 19th century.

Whilst Teneriffe lace is composed of beautiful embroidery worked on a spoked "wheel" of very fine thread, daisy looming is all about the motifs themselves.

Made from fabulously coloured yarns, daisy motifs usually have very little embroidery on them, commonly only a small amount which holds the webbing in place at the centre. The edges are left free, or may be crocheted or knotted to hold the petals in place and join the motifs together.

These flowers were made on the round "Knit Wit" loom, manufactured by Bucilla.

Yarns

There are many yarns that work well with daisy looms. In order to produce an attractive, well formed motif, your yarn must be of an even diameter throughout. As you can see from the photo on the left, the texture of your yarn is totally up to you! I have successfully used a large range of yarns including:

• Plain wool, acrylic and rayon
• Acrylic and wool bouclé
• Rayon eyelash (It was difficult to keep the loops an even size so I cut them for a pom-pom flower)
• Acrylic/wool chenille
• Tulle strips (Sold as a yarn wound into "wheels" in craft shops in Australia)
• Mohair
• Ribbon yarn
• Raffia

All work well, and produce a large range of different effects.

Yarns that don't work well (like those on the left), are uneven in width. They produce lumpy, uneven flowers that tend to look like something the cat barfed up.

My samples include an off-white thick-and-thin wool on the bottom right, a blue ladder yarn with big, firm bobbles on the left, and a textured pink and orange yarn with big pink and orange bobbles (top).

If you really want to use a bobbly yarn like the blue and pink/orange ones, try stitching the centres with a plain, smooth yarn. It may or may not work, depending on the size and firmness of the bobbles.

The Birch "Daisy Wheel". These photos show the underside of the wheel.

Looms

The Birch "Daisy Wheel" is available in Spotlight stores in Australia (at the time of writing this article), and is an almost exact duplicate of the metal daisy wheels first manufactured at the beginning of the 20th century. The metal knob on the underside of the wheel is turned to make the spokes appear and recede.

Many vintage wheels have a smooth raised circle on the embroidery surface, whilst the Birch wheel is entirely flat.

The Birch Daisy Wheel, showing the flat embroidery surface.

If you want to make an article from British or Australian patterns from the 1900's to 1950's, you'll find this is very close to the correct size loom, measuring 2 inches in diameter.

This loom is best suited to yarns of fingering weight, or thinner, as the spokes are quite short. Traditionally, motifs made on the loom were made with fingering weight yarn for the flowers (Aussie 4 ply yarn), and lace weight yarn for the crocheted edges (this yarn would be called 2 ply in Australia).

The blue motifs you can see on the left are made from a Japanese fingering weight wool with crocheted edges, while the red flower is made from an Australian DK weight wool (Cleckheaton Country 8 ply), and has a knotted edging.

Commonly known as the "1000 Flowers" loom, these plastic flower looms were very popular in the 1980's.

A large number of these were available in Australia at the time and were usually found in the craft section of toy shops and the toy aisles in department stores like BigW, where I purchased mine in the mid 1990's, shortly before they disappeared from the shelves.

The open centres of these looms make them very easy to stitch, but raffia does tend to slide off very easily because of the upright position of the pegs.

Different brands of flower looms were available in both round and square shapes, in different sizes, and with two or three rounds of pegs.

On the top left is a motif made on my yellow flower loom with two rounds of pegs.

The motif at the bottom left is made on the pink loom with three rounds of pegs.

The looms with three rounds of pegs are very versatile. You can make motifs that use all three rounds of pegs at once, or any combination of the three rounds. So, with this one loom you can make:

• a small motif
• medium motif
• medium motif with small centre
• large motif
• large motif with small centre
• large motif with medium centre
• large motif using all three rounds (double centre)

The Knit-Wit loom set by Bucilla is available again (at the time of writing this article) in Spotlight stores throughout Australia and many shops online.

The Knit-Wit loom comes in a set of two shapes with written instructions in several languages and a DVD (English only).

Most of the instructions are fine but if you purchase one of these sets don't cut your yarns close to the knots, even though they tell you to. Cut your yarns leaving at least 6 inches of yarn and darn the ends into the centre at the back of the motif. If you don't, your motif will fall apart.

Dodgy instructions aside, the actual looms are very comfortable to use and I have found them to be very well made.

On the left you can see the Knit-Wit looms in their "open" position with the spokes sticking out. They are a cross between the hand made looms of the 1800's with their long handle, and the early spoked looms, like the Birch daisy wheel I mentioned earlier. The knob at the end of the handle is twisted to make the spokes appear and recede.

The Knit-Wit looms are slightly larger than the vintage and Birch looms.

Both the round and square looms measure 2½ inches across. Vintage Knit-Wit looms may be slightly smaller.

On the left you can see some of the many flowers I have made on the round loom. As with all of the other daisy looms, you can leave the petals free, cut them, or make a crocheted or knotted edging. There are also a large range of techniques for stitching the centre which I have made availabe on the small looms section of my website at http://www.knitting-and.com/small-looms/index.html

On the left you will find some motifs I have made on the square Knit-Wit loom.

On the far left is a motif with a knotted edge, made from tulle "yarn".

On the right is a motif with a crocheted edge, made from DK weight wool (Aussie 8 ply wool).

There are many more daisy and flower looms available at the moment. The Boye Flower loom, Clover's Hana Ami Loom and the Knifty Knitter flower loom among others. The 1000 flower loom set is also often available on Ebay.