the star bursts forth

a tatted star/snowflake and picot join to the right in tatting

 

Star #1 (p49, Dover)

'Tatting Patterns and Designs'

Blomqvist and Persson

Techniques : 2 shuttles, thrown rings, fs/bs tatting, clovers, picot join to the right*.

In Anchor Size 40/50 & 3 strands of pale blue embroidery floss for center it measures 2¾”

I did the central ring separately in embroidery thread.

The outer part was worked continuously in 2 colours.

What attracted me to this medallion is the changes in chain orientation ! And with the use of 2 colours, I was able to highlight these shorter chains.

In order to do it, I switched shuttles, but did not reverse work (SS, DNRW). Voila, the curve of the chains changes from convex to concave when seen from front.

In order to get full stitches on the front, yet avoid colour blips in 2-colour tatting -

the rings around the central blue ring were joined to the former as follows :

Before starting the join, make 1fhs, then a picot join with up loop, then continue with rest of pattern.

That extra stitch is barely seen in fine thread.

In tatting and joining an element backside (RODS), the joining loop follows 1shs.

Works for me.

* Picot Join to the right is what we generally know as the last to first join performed using the folded join or twisted picot join or even ‘avoiding the folded join’. I have updated my list of tutorials for these joins here (scroll down to JOINS)

In this star the last element was a chain to be joined to a ring; though most often we end up joining the last ring to first ring in a medallion.

Okay I can hear you groaning and muttering "not another term!!!" 
But think about it - if you read down the list of folded joins and avoiding them, there are many other terms that mean the same and do the same job. 
Yet, there are questions and queries and confusion about when, whether, or which join to use.
The Common Thread is that ALL THESE JOINS ARE MADE TO AN ELEMENT ON THE RIGHT OF THE PRESENT ONE. 
In majority of our tatting, the picot join is made to an old element/picot which lies to the LEFT of the present one.
It is only when the old element lies to the Right, that we need to either twist a picot, fold the work, or reorient the work in order to make a connection. 
Hence this grouping under the heading "Picot Join to the Right". Once we have this category, How we go about accomplishing it is our own prerogative. But at least now beginners know that a 'different' tweak is required.

Yes, I'm getting off the soap box - it's already cracking under my weight ;-)

whether we join to our left, or to our right ,
it's happy tatting time always ... :-)