Need help with dict.

I could really do with some help with [dict], which I’m trying to use for the first time, and failing to get my head around.
I’m trying to set up a way of storing the grid settings in a live.grid, in a particular format where cells in a column that are on are stored as the number of the cell. (I'm taking each column list from live.grid - e.g. [column 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0...] and turning that using various LObjects into [1, 1 4 6] )
So an e.g. of the set of columns might be
1, 1 4 6;
2, 3;
3, 1;
4, 3;
5, 1 4;
etc…
15, 1 7;
16, 3 6;
(I’m storing them like this for a reason! The pattern above represents a sequence of 16 chords. Originally each pattern I stored like this was monophonic, which meant that I could store each pattern on a single line of a "master" coll. When I wanted to recall a pattern I would just select the line I wanted in the "master" and then iterate that line into a temp coll from which I could read out the note in the pattern one at a time. The problem now is that I want to store polyphonic patterns, which means groups of notes rather than single notes. Stored in a single line in the "master" coll, there's no way of knowing where to break the output line (though I suppose I could add in a differentiating symbol when I compile the polyphonic list to show where to break the groups of integers. My theory is that this should be easier to manage in dict. Maybe? )
So, I can get them into a dict by pulling from the named coll, but only that one set of settings. Which looks like this
{
“1”, [1, 4, 6]
“2”, [3]
“3”, [1] …etc
}
But I want to store lots of sets of patterns. I guess like this..

{
ptnset1 {
“1”, [1, 4, 6]
“2”, [3]
“3”, [1] …etc
}
ptnset2 {
“1”, [2,7]
“2”, [3, 6]
“3”, [1, 3, 5] …etc
}
etc
}

As I said above, in the past (when there was only 1 item for each column) I did this in coll.
(ptn)1, 1 3 1 4 5 1 3 1;
(ptn) 2, 1 2 1 5 1 6;

But as the number of items in each column (“1” etc) is variable, I won’t know where to split the lists when I dump them out into a temp coll.

So the basic question is - how do I format the messages for dict, so that I can store as many separate sets of column patterns as I want? (so I can recall them by e.g. sending a [get ptnset1::] message to the dict.)

thanks!