falling over

tatted maple leaf

My very first balls of Lizbeth threads arrived after a 3 week wait !!! The first to tumble in was Falling Leaves in size 40. Well, a fall leaf just Had to be tatted. Here is the lovely ….

Maple Leaf Motif

 Tammy Rodgers

a free pattern from Georgia Seitz's vast collection 

It was a pleasure to tat. But I did get confused about direction. I had started with ball & shuttle as mentioned in pattern. But I decided to tat the center trefoil in clockwise direction, and that resulted in the overall leaf being worked in counterclockwise direction, as seen in pic below !

Here's my working and notes....

1. Shoe lace trick or Two Shuttles ?

If working with single shuttle & ball, you need to do an overhand tie or SLT (shoe lace trick) for Ring D & also the last ring.

Rings D & U act like thrown rings, because of the change in chain direction to & from the ring, hence the need for a SLT or a second shuttle.

I try to avoid SLTs . Instead cut ample thread from ball & wound it CTM to Shuttle 2 at this stage.  

Please note that the SLT instruction is missing from an otherwise Excellent diagram.
There is also a bit of confusion about when not to reverse considering our more modern-day working. I would've explained just a bit differently, for tatters like me - I racked my brain trying to accomplish what was written. But it wouldn't work without a SLT or 2 shuttles.
This pattern was taught in the Beginner Class, but I haven't read the logs. This might have come up in the discussion. 

TIP : Brainwave ! Just struck me that I could've continued with ball & shuttle by working these 2 rings as Reverse Rings !!! Now that's a neat functional use for reverse rings. (more about RR in my next post. More synonyms & resources - scroll down to RINGS  - Thrown/floating rings).
ps : I tried it and it does work !  

2. Frontside/Backside Tatting :

If you prefer to tat rings frontside & chains backside (reverse order double stitch – RODS)), then make the first 3 rings RODS & adjacent chain frontside. From rings D through U, all can now be tatted frontside & chains RODS.

I forgot my own TWoT directions & ended up tatting All outer rings backside !

3. Stem

For a thicker stem I used padded double stitches or pds (2,2) for a decent length.

Should've blocked the leaf, coz I made a mistake in the first chain itself ! Only 15 stitches instead of 20 :-(

many thanks to Tammy and Georgia's Online Tatting Class 

for making this pattern available to us !

I have lots of fall leaf patterns in my collection to use this colorway. The thread works well. Took the plunge because Handy Hands is now listed in Amazon world & I can pay in Indian currency. But what a high price (with shipping & import duty) !!! For a total of 3 Lizbeth balls (not much choice in colours so far), I could’ve bought 43, yes forty three Anchor balls!!!

Ah well, what can you do if one has intentionally decided to fall :-D 

happy tatting always :-)