cornered Alibaba ropes in a ninth

Alibaba has been cornered and held captive in the cave! But stealthily, he has been weaving a rope, using straw and stuff lying around. And when a few robbers return after a long hiatus, he ropes in one more to make the toll 9 and escapes to the wilderness! Read on for tatting translation ;-P

Cornered !

Blossoms Corner Motif #1

So here’s the pattern for the corner motif for the hanky. It is not part of the 40 motifs needed, and I haven’t decided whether the saree will have any corner motifs. Hence this standalone is Alibaba himself!

Measurements in Lizbeth size 20 : 2¼” x 2¼” x 2¾”
If desired, the leaf triad on the right can be repeated on the left instead of the 2 leaves.

 

Anita & I often exchange ideas & pics of our current projects. I sent her the above WIP pics, and asked her a few questions. She confirmed that the central negative space needs to be filled and sent me a Flower Cluster Edging pic for ideas. Wow! From 1944. It was the first time I saw this, but the similarity is astounding, isn't it?! The entire book can be downloaded from the same site.

Now I knew my flowers were very basic – deliberately so. In the last millennium, I had made these for another of my MIL’s saree – yellow and maroon flowers with greens. This pic is of the few leftovers that I sewed to my kitchen napkins. This flower, one of my favourites, was my inspiration. And you can see how old and used the tatting has become ;-P 

The Rope !

Leaf Braid

When the motifs were placed on the saree, clearly an edging was needed to 'hold' them in. What else but a 9m long rope – Jane McLellan's Leaf Braid again ;-P She has now uploaded a flowery variation with free pdf. I had chosen beige, but it was too light. This brown complements the colourful blossoms. Since this pic was taken 7+ meters have been tatted.
  

TIP : What is interesting is that this braid has a tendency to stretch due to the slight elasticity in size 20 Anchor thread. Size 40 did not have that elasticity and kept it's length for the hanky. So I’ve been manually stretching this braid every so often to get a correct final length – don’t want it to sag after sewing!

NOTE: Despite the length, and change of 19 shuttles so far, I haven't had to sew in any tails! I'll share my tip later.

Roped In !

Blossoms Motif #9

After almost a month, the 9^th of 40 thieves came to fruition. Here's the notated pattern...

Measures 2¼” x <1” in Lizbeth size 20.

A couple more pics with the motif oriented differently ...

 

And finally 2 shuttles (including the green) have run out of thread. Still enough left in other shuttles to hopefully get a 10th motif in.

All Blossoms Motifs patterns are being listed under Nature 2D.

Back to Cluny tatting - along with a bracelet pattern :-)