Friday 12 January 2018

mad or maddening ?

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am I going mad over medallions ?
do you find it maddening to go through it  with me ?
Well, you are excused ; can’t say whether I can be rescued yet ;-P

Yup, more trials, prototypes and procedural peeks !
Made sporadically over the last several weeks, experimenting with different elements and effects to form enclosed space medallions.

1. Square Wave
Combination of elements -- space outlined with alternating split rings and chains.

I’d forgotten all about this. Lucky to have taped it on the page! Trials start from bottom up and the yellow one is rejected now.

2nd round creates a bit of a swirl wave if seen closely.
Need to decrease the negative space.
I had some time today and worked around the square with small tweak. This one has offset picots and smaller SRs in 1st round.

Techniques : 2-shuttle tatting, split rings, lock joins. 2 rounds. About 3.5" in Anchor size 20.


2. Dancing Peacocks
Onion rings enclose the space.

This design gave me grief!!! Whether it was getting the innermost JR to lie flat or where to place the picot to join adjacent rings. Also, how many onin rings were needed for the medallion to lie flat, since I didn't want to increase the length of the connecting chains. 
The bits you see above don't show the parts where I un-tatted and re-tatted!

Finally, I did away with joining picots altogether.  Now, I can decide where the adjacent rings need to be attached and place picots accordingly. 

The innermost ring is a FB-JR. The overhand knot in floating beads method Does make the Josephine Ring lie in same plane as the outer rings. 

Although I deliberately made spaced out concentric rings, it cramps the adjacent rings. 
Need to reduce the stitchcount in the 3rd onion ring.

Techniques : 2 shuttle-tatting, Josephine ring using Floating Beads method, Onion rings (faux rings made with chains), dots, thrown/floating rings.


3. Inter-Sections
Celtic or Interlaced center made with lock chains.

This piece is made in pieces ! Hence the name.
Although there are many on my to-tat list, I don't remember tatting any such faux-Celtic pieces. So I'm actually thrilled to get something off the shuttles!
2 triangles make up the 6-point interlaced center.
Then a round of lock chains.
Next a 6-tip insertion through rings.
Followed by another round of LCh.

Need to remove the last round (as already done above) unless more rounds are added. Need to increase the central negative space, and also use different colours. Lots of tweaking required !

Techniques : 2-shuttle tatting, lock chains, interlacing, lock joins.

For the present these are standalones, but can easily function as motifs to create larger lace. 
Medallions are a quick, fun way to design and stop whenever desired.  Who knows I might come back to enlarge some of these at some future date. Meanwhile my medallion stash increases (as does my workload ;-P) ! 

have fun whatever you tat J

14 comments:

  1. Interesting experiments. I like peacocks best, but clearly it’s trickier than it looks!

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    1. That's my favorite, too, Jane. It won't be difficult to tat the final version, but doing it from scratch was frustrating.

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  2. You're off to a good start with these. I also like the peacock one (brown and teal look nice together). But the inter-sections one looks very intricate. Good luck with designing!

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    1. Thanks, Lavi! The inter-sections one needs more work to show off the interweaving in the center. But it felt great to be able to come up with something ;-P

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  3. What fun, I love your turquoise and ecru one the best of all. this is a great pass time :)

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    1. Carollyn, I'm glad I persisted with the dancing peacocks - worth it. A good pass-time for the present and perhaps a storehouse for the future ?!

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  4. You've got a lot of variety here. All great medallions. It's been a long time since I created some designs with interlocking rounds. They still hold a fascination for me. I really like the effect of the lock chain rounds. A great way to pull the color scheme together. Looking forward to more of your explorations.

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  5. What fun! I love seeing your experiments, and that dancing peacock is extra special! I do like your color choices!

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  6. I like the dancing peacocks. It's the concentric circles. They show off the colors so well.

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  7. Out of all of them I like the dancing peacocks the best, I like doing onion rings which I know is not the most popular design in tatting. The last one would have driven me to distraction

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  8. Thank you for your lovely comments Eliz, Diane, Tim, & Margaret :-)

    I love lock chains, especially in contrasting colours. And they are slimmer & more pliable ;-P
    Sometimes colours just come together - a stroke of luck in my case :-D
    Margaret, actually the interlaced piece was quite fun to tat and not as difficult as a true Celtic motif would be. Especially since the central pieces are worked separately and care needs to be taken only when weaving at the very end.

    I'm working on sharing the pattern for the dancing peacocks as soon as possible. The linkage worked well on the newly tatted one.

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  9. Those are fabulous designs!! :)

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  10. Wonderful medallions Muskaan. Love the onion rings n lock chain st applications.

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  11. Thanks Sue & Usha :-) Have a great tatting-filled day

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