flaky flowers or flaky me ?!

a 3D tatted flower and another from a snowflake perhaps

3D Carnation (a prototype)

My whimsical tatting which started out as a chrysanthemum (perhaps a marigold in different colours) and turned into a carnation !

Flower is worked in size 40 thread & foliage in size 20

The stem should’ve been longer of course – and it isn’t actually a stem – it was a trial of my pine needles idea turned and sewn around to act as a stem ;-P 

Techniques used : How to work a ring on the picot of another ring ; Pearl tatting with snipped picots

Twelfth Day of December Snowflake (partial)

Lene Björn

from 24 Snowflakes in Tatting

for 2016 Snowflake Challenge on Craftree

Here, I wanted to highlight the radiating rings. Started with single shuttle (white) leaving a long white tail to climb out .

TIP : For outward facing rings with bare thread space(BTS) : to keep the symmetry of the medallion, I do not hide the tail in the first ring. Instead, when the last ring is tatted and closed, I thread this tail and sew it inside the last ring. This gives an appearance of continuity in the center.

In this case, since split ring was used to climb out, the tail was already long and used for 2^nd side of SR stitches, thus completing the inner bare thread circle.

Ball with variegated thread was joined in round 2.

Instead of thrown rings, I opted to make the rings in the next round and attach to tiny picots on the previous round chains.

And going by previous false memory, I increased the chain stitch count by 1 on either side. Turns out it wasn’t needed, ughh.

I continued.

However, the last round caused me further grief because I couldn’t get the 2 white ‘8’ rings to stay in a line. Maybe SLT would’ve helped. Moreover this variegation didn’t work out as well as I’d imagined, especially on the last round, with lots of picots – it looked to ‘heavy’. A subtler tint, perhaps ? Cut off the last round midways. Decided to leave it and tat a new one. It looks more like a flower, though, with those chains arching like petals.

In size 40 Anchor (white), & Lizbeth (purple splendour)

Rnd 1 - 1¼” ;  Rnd 2 - > 1½” ; Rnd 3 - 2¼”  ; Rnd 4 - ~ 3" ; Rnd 5 – not tatted

Techniques : SR to climb out, outward facing rings, shuttle and ball.

Future idea -- make All 4 or 5 radiating rings as mock rings, with inward picot on core.
I also see a 3D flower - morning glory in these colours ! 

As it turns out, I actually used my future idea, but you’ll have to wait a bit to see it, while I write out the post :-)

 ® Are the flowers flaky or is it just me ?!

 happy tatting ®