Tuesday 20 June 2017

tell the world it's not easy!

Pin It now!
daisy picot star and tatting notes

From now on we tell the world it's not easy. This delightful article was recently shared on Craftree.
It Is true – we generally spend longer than we care on our projects. I usually do share my mistakes and all, but don’t like to make it a sob-story.
This time, though, I stand by the title (no kidding, no fibbing, no embellishing) – this star did not come easy and I spent way too much time.

Daisy Picot Star
Jon Yusoff

I was inspired by Jane's star project to pick this up, and the fear that I'd forgotten how to make a daisy picot. And like her, I joined leaves which should've remained floating ! Too far into it to un-tat. Cut off and started afresh.
I’ve done the daisy picot before. It’s pretty easy once we know how to hold and how to wrap stitches. But rarely used, hence easy to forget. This time I referred to Jon’s own pictorial – excellent directions !

A stroke of luck from Utah made me realise that I the daisy picot stitches are wrapped in what we termed Twist Work in Reverse Stitch (TwW rs) !!!

Clearly I like to make my tatting life difficult! I've gotten addicted to directional (fs/bs) tatting. This star tested me to the limits. Not only did I have to refresh my daisy picot skill, but now I needed to tat them backside as well!
AND join to adjoining trefoil daisy picot backside ! Managed somehow, with lots of retro-tatting. But what's a project without some challenge, right?! And I was adamant. Fortunately I was working with size 20 threads.

My Notes :
  • In the discarded attempt, I started with the inner daisy picot trefoils frontside. The work progressed in counterclockwise direction, and joining to adjacent daisy picot was easy.
  • In 2nd attempt, with inner trefoils being worked backside, and work progressing in clockwise direction, joining became difficult – it seemed like I was using “picot join to the right” methods. But it could just be some messing around with up and down picots.  
  • To eliminate the space between chains at base of daisy picot, I had to pull real tight, not always successfully. Should’ve had an anchoring vsp !
  • I slipped the yellow thread through the last half stitch of ring before closing in the hopes of keeping the 2 threads as close as possible. I think size of base ring (& thread size?) also has a role to play.
  • For the leaves, I did not use SLT. Easy to make the ‘8’ leaves without any SLT if the side chains face in opposite directions.
  • The arms need careful attention for some unfathomable reason. Perhaps some design-induced mind games coz I faced similar problems with Marilee’s snowflake!



Back to the aforementioned article – delightful read and I agree as a crafter. But she misses one point – not every crafter can fib and market oneself. That in itself is a skill that needs to be acquired :-D

Many thanks to Jon for sharing her pattern and tutorial

easy or difficult, it’s happy tatting time always !

11 comments:

  1. This motif is beautiful!
    Well, as the owner of a blog with "that" name, I should say that "facilissimo" for me is a sort of encouragement, to arouse curiosity and willpower to try this out. Someone is attracted by difficult crafts, someone else needs encouragement. We are all different.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wisely said, Ninetta :-) I usually don’t go for ‘facilissimo’ unless the pattern really appeals to me aesthetically ;-P And then there are times when we want to simply let our hands take over the repetitive movements!

      Delete
  2. It is a pretty motif, but I've never thought it looked easy. I guess I should give it a try! :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diane, what flummoxed me is that the daisy picot was easily refreshed, yet the rest of it created hurdles ! Go figure :-D

      Delete
  3. Oh wow, as though it wasn't tricky enough already! Well done, you mastered the challenge. It's true that even a tatter probably wouldn't realise how much time and concentration it required, let alone a non-tatter who asks you to just whip one up for her.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How true, Jane ! And I haven’t even mentioned the number of times I untatted a ring here, a ring there, or a chain – and the time it cost of course ;-P Thanks for the inspiration, though :-)
      And remember the Mac-tatted braid and the Twist Work in reverse stitch pictorial accompanying it? Huh, turns out a daisy picot stitches are wrapped in exactly the same way - TwW rs !!!
      When I give away my tatting, it is only to people who realize their worth in terms of my labour of love.

      Delete
    2. Yes, I thought of those braids when I was working this, and was too lazy to do it properly!

      Delete
  4. Great post! Ah, yes, I too have had SUCH difficulty learning this technique utilizing fs/bs tatting. I should give it another try...😉

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah Fox, what can I say - we love to "muddy the waters" as you once prophetically said ;-P Looking forward to your latest.

      Delete