hexagonal scrapyard !

quatrefoil hexagon – lie of the land

I mentioned how the quatrefoil hexagon was giving me trouble. My very first attempt ruffled, but settled down after the rolling pin blocking method. Not satisfied, many tweaks were sporadically attempted....

an uneven surface !

Here is the condensed result of my ‘logical’ rationale of changing the joining point, the inner diameter, the outer cross section, etc. –

1. original – lays flat after blocking

2. long inner rings – I like the effect, but overlaps around the edge

3. works perfectly as a pentagon

4, 5, 6 – discarded midways.

There was one more which turned into a nice square, but has run away somewhere – it had a small SR between each quatrefoil.

This scrapyard does not include all the tiny scraps I threw away immediately ;-D

a volunteer to clean up ?

As the name suggests, it is a quatrefoil pattern – 4 equal-size rings; hence I cannot change the stitch count on any of the 4 main rings.

Can any of you experienced designers/tatters offer some tips on how to get it flatter, without  compulsory blocking?

Or perhaps someone could offer to test tat this medallion (only left one above) to decide whether the ruffle is negligible or workable or whether the pattern needs to be scrapped ?

I would very much appreciate a volunteer to test tat it. 

charmed perhaps

Meanwhile I went ahead and completed the bookmark. It is made in one pass, using quatrefoil squares, and hexagon for the main body and a pentagon for the charm, all connected with lock chains.

This is just the prototype, with a few distracted errors (one cannot watch a tennis match and create a pattern simultaneously !) Once the hexagon issue is resolved, I will re-tat and write up this bookmark pattern.

squared paths

While writing my previous post I had identified a simple path to create a magic square out of the quatrefoil square. It involves tatting the entire square and climbing out with a SR. This is possible because there are no chains in the pattern.

But Robin’s tutorial post rekindled my curiosity and I wondered how the triangulation would work on this all-rings pattern. Well, it works fine obviously (the left one in pic). So this pattern actually has 2 paths to choose from.

I have worked further since this pic was taken & it reminded me suddenly of the Fandango motif (round 1 only). Quickly checked it out – phew, not the same.

It will be interesting to see how the 2 colours work out since some of the corner rings are split.

I believe that this rings-only magic square might perhaps be easier to work as a first-time serpentine magic square because one does not have to reverse work between rings and chains.

All tatting done in size 40 thread.

Please leave a comment (or email me) if you wish to test tat the hexagon. 

I also have a question about writing/presenting the pattern.

Grateful for any help you can provide.  

tatting scraps make the best scrapyard !!!!

Related Posts :

Motifs within magic square

Triangulation of magic square

Edgings from magic square

Quatrefoil design hack