while you were away, Diane …

earring tatting pattern using Floating Beads methods

When I first posted a prototype, it turned out to be in Diane’s favorite colour and birth gem! These earrings Had to be hers ! So while she was away enjoying Tat Days, here’s her welcome back gift in the form of a mainly schematics pattern along with a 2-colour version. 

Since it is for our Ice Drop lady, there had to be a ‘drop’ in the name, right?! So here’s the pattern for ….

Floating Teardrops for Diane

Earrings Pattern

This is a very basic and versatile pattern that can be used as earrings, pendant, or brooch. Change the number or size of beads, change the stitchcount of the 2 chain rounds, etc. to get a different look - dense, airy...as is visible in the 3 pieces photographed above.

Let your imagination & creativity soar while you enjoy tatting these up.

It is a single shuttle and ball pattern (CTM) with barely any thread on the shuttle and a Floating Beads String as center.

I have tried to diagram the 2 basic steps for FB string. Hope it is clear. Otherwise the stepwise pictorials can be found here – Floating Beads String for the beaded center, and Floating Beads - on Chain (same as in ring) for the teardrop bead.

Only thing to keep in mind when tensioning the FB string is to leave some slack on the string. This space between beads is where the joins in next round will be made.
In above pic, left one is the original & in the right one I increased the stitches in outer chains, thus highlighting the concentric arcs.

I tried a 2-colour version using 2 shuttles. 

To switch colours/shuttles for Round 2, either make a Reverse Join or a Lock Join and SLT (shoe lace trick).

2-colour version can still be worked with single shuttle if one uses Reverse Stitch chains (unflipped stitches as in split rings).

Worked in Anchor size 20 threads which probably equates to Lizbeth size 10.

Click here to download pdf

UPDATE: A beautiful needle-tatted version by Amarilys Cwb - https://tipsaroundthehome.blogspot.com/2021/11/fooled-by-tool.html

This is it for now. I hope you enjoy tatting these using diverse colours, sizes and stitchcounts. Very quick to tat up too.

In case of any problems, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

drops in any form – ice or water – are always fun to tat J