flower flakes

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along with hearts and angels!

You know how I enjoy extracting motifs and smaller designs from a larger pattern and highlighting them through colour. Don’t get me wrong – I love all-white snowflakes (such as this one), but the need to play around gets the better of me ;-P Perhaps I use colours as a Freudian cover-up to hide my tatting flaws ?! Also, the stiffness of some of the white threads is off-putting.

Sharon Briggs has been on a snowflake-designing spree for the past several weeks. And I jumped in with a few flowery expressions – flower flakes! These were made a few weeks back during my convalescence, with scarcely any notes. I don’t even remember my tatting order. A couple of them cupped a bit, but in the end they blocked out fine. Some of these could look good tessellated, hence I have included dimensions for both point-to-point and the length as a tiled motif.

TIP : All her snowflakes can be worked continuously. Due to use of colours, I worked some of the rounds separately, while in some one thread continued for some rounds. Working in one pass is optional – for those not comfortable with split rings and split chains, cut and tie after a round and start next round afresh.

Techniques I used : 2-shuttle, one-pass, ctm, rosette/rose medallion, daisy medallion, lock join, thrown/floating rings, dimpled rings, split ring &/or split chain to climb out/climb in, 3 threads (double shuttle).

TõT

Flower Flakes – stylised

1. Poinsettia

Nov 21, 2018 flake

Anchor size 40 : 6½ cms as flake ; 5½ cms as motif

She called it "unimaginative". Hardly ! I could see a poinsettia there, though my model seems to be squatter than her's. I wouldn’t mind adding one more round to bring in a more petal-y poinsettia look.

2. Blue Bonnet (top view)

Little Flake

Anchor size 40 : >4 cms as flake ; <4 cms as motif

I came across blue bonnets in a story I was reading and loved them.... which is how I had visualized this in shades of blue. I wanted to make the outer round in a darker shade, except I'd have to use embroidery threads & didn't want to hamper my tatting flow.

3. Cattleya Orchid

December 3, 2018 snowflake

Anchor white & Lizbeth purple splendour size 40 - 4½ cms as flake ; 4 cms as motif

I like how this turned out !!!

4. Madonna Lily

November27, 2018 snowflake

Anchor size 40 : 7 cms as flake ; >6 cms as motif

I simply love the ‘filigree’ and colours would probably take away from that look. Hence, a white lily ; the central ring could’ve been yellow, though. 
I'm hoping to give this another go in colours though - it's such a pretty pattern!

I’m pretty certain I mixed up 2 whites while making it – one was a tad finer, vintage.

TõT

Hearts and Angels

Sharon also has quite a few flakes with dimpled heart motifs.

I test-tatted this Daisy Ring Heart pattern.

Anchor size 40 : 7½  cms as flake ; <7 cms as motif

Despite using very small picots in the penultimate round, 

the outermost round required 7 ds chain segments throughout – just as Sharon had predicted.

But do you see the angels between the hearts?! 
Or perhaps bats if you want to mix in Halloween ;-P

Y

Ever since her first heart snowflake, I wanted to make only the heart in red. I’ll get to that, but for this December 22, 2018 pattern I used pink hearts against a cream thread.

Anchor size 40 : 8  cms as flake ; 7 cms as motif

I started with one shuttle and ball, ctm for the central ring.

Then I included a pink shuttle for the hearts. Since I couldn’t work the connecting chains with direct tatting (unflipped or reverse stitch), they were tatted with double shuttles – the 2 shuttles stuck together temporarily.

The 2 outer rounds were worked with single shuttle and ball again.

Y

The above pic was taken before I worked the pink hearts flake.

I now have 8 of her 2018 flakes tatted (2 more flower flakes here). 

There are still a few more of her flakes I’d like to tat in the coming days. 

Except she’s belting them out faster than I can tat ;-P What a bonanza for tatters !!!

TõT

Related Posts

sunflake

flower flakes (the flower within)

heart flakes (the heart within)

Thank you, Sharon, for a fun-filled winter, and the promise of more to come!