valley of flowers

Valley of Flowers mandala doily/coaster
Eleonore Endrucks Leichtenstern  
Pattern #28 from Schiffchen-Spitzen 1920 

UPDATE: 

NEW VERSIONS- https://tipsaroundthehome.blogspot.com/2021/10/bagatelle-to-bagaball.html

PATTERN PDF -  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vG2g0JCVsy8cy2DfGKHEhxleq_7Rveba/view

Starting in 2015, as a summer holiday project for the Online Tatting Class, I have been converting many of Endrucks’ patterns to modern notation in English. These are (mostly) still only on paper as I didn’t get around to actually tatting a sample. The ones I tatted still need a proper presentation. So besides the angel lace and angelette, I haven't shared anything since. I've also come across a couple of errors.

When Georgia shared pattern #28 in this Bellaonline article, I had already written out my own notations. It is such a pretty pattern that I was eager to convert it into thread. 

I took a few little liberties especially with picots to highlight flowers.

The entire book can be downloaded from Georgia Seitz’s Archive (Endrucks 1920 & Endrucks 1920 diagrams insert).

There is some beautifully natural ruffling after some of the rounds, eg. the one above. However I kept tatting and it lays flat easily after blocking with the rolling pin. 
The magenta rings were supposed to be thrown rings on the previous round. Instead I shifted the rings to this outer round and the previous is chains only, so that I could play with  colours easily.

You can see I’ve gone to town with the palette. I had a floral theme (perhaps I was inspired by Jane McLellan’s doily?) and though some colours were changed as I went along, it turned out fine. 

The chains in Endrucks’ tatted model are pretty loose (see last pic below) whereas my tendency is to pull the stitches close. Hence a few stitches had to be added on some chains - starting with the ones under blue flowers, and the 3 corresponding ones in later rounds.

Just shy of 4” in Anchor pearl Cotton which is equivalent to Lizbeth size 20.

I’m calling it Valley of Flowers Mandala – it does have the mandala look about it, right? And I need a Zen-like state to tolerate these soaring summer temperatures of 45+ degree Celsius with no respite for yet another week.

Now for the eye-opener .... 
What I missed while converting the pattern, Georgia Seitz's experienced eye caught!!! Although she wrote in the article, it still took me some time to locate!!

CLIMBING OUT WITH CHAINS : Endrucks worked all 9 rounds continuously WITHOUT any split rings or split chains to climb out. She used simple chains!!! Can you trace these?

Not acceptable by modern standards, yet I think this is a great way to climb out especially when we are doing trials of possible designs – quick and easy and obviously lazy ;-D

Hope you are enjoying much better weather and lots of tatting creativity :-)

UPDATE: For all links and pattern pdfs in modern style scroll through Endrucks 1920 Project document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/17LEVftXweztBIOWh4sL4BB7bX65ssoOsOn4oXIgCepY/view