Days of my life

Pin It now!

Day 12 snowflake and Day 6 TIAS (and Day 7 to come) ... it's all about tatting !

Twelfth Day of December Snowflake

Lene Björn

from 24 Snowflakes in Tatting

for 2016 Snowflake Challenge on Craftree

When the chains, and colour for last round, didn’t work out, I left the piece and started a new one, experimenting with a different route this time.

What I wanted :

• Ring spokes highlighted in a different colour
• Rings in the spokes facing outwards
• No colour blips in the chain.

Mock rings to the rescue. Picot space held in place by paper clips, to be joined on the way down.

Mock rings are simply chains joined back on themselves or at points to create a ring-like effect.

The mock rings are quite longish. Later, while blocking, a tug at each ring brought it back to a better shape.

I started with single shuttle, making the copper ring medallion, then joined yellow thread for chains in the next round.

This chain round would have mock rings thrown off. So, following my discovery in the poinsettia flake, I left a short length of yellow (seen going down near the blue clip in the previous pic) as CTM to use as core thread, on which the chain stitches would be worked, encapsulating the shuttle 1 copper thread within. When the 'thrown off' mock rings were needed, I pulled out the SH2 yellow to act as core and copper for the stitches. Partially successful.

The rest went quickly – long chains joined at base with lock join, and across mock rings with a crossover/ over-under / alligator join.

I used a picot gauge for the last round.

The partial one (in size 40 Anchor white & Lizbeth) measured 2¾” and this one is 2½ upto the same round !

So, I’ve been working with size 50 and didn’t know it ! No wonder, I couldn’t see the threads easily.

Techniques : mock rings, picot on core thread, encapsulation, alligator join, lock join, picot gauge

Measurement : 3¾” in size 50 Anchor Mercer (0302 – yellow  ; 0896 – copper) 

Tat It And See 2017 - DAY 6

Jane Eborall

Day 6 and awaiting Day 7 later in the day.

It could still be a butterfly, a wagon, a horse, and of course a gown. Clueless as ever :-D

Whatever it is, though, I like the look so far - nice shape and effect.

Oh, Great news !!! Remember when I bought the 3 Lizbeth balls at that exorbitant cost? Well, yesterday, they refunded about 10% - export duty overcharged ! Yippeee, now I can buy some more - restores one's faith and happy days ;-P 

 so it’s happy tatting … what better way to spend our days☺