sakuras and shuttles

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what does one do when one is laid up in bed, without necessarily lying down ?

Tat, of course !!!

And this lovely pattern, shared on the same day, caught my eye. I've been meaning to tat one of her designs for a while now.

Cherry Blossom Doily 1 Variation

Hye-oon Lee
(of lovelytatting.com)

I liked two aspects - the 16 central outward-facing rings, and the thrown rings on the last round. Perfect!

After a bit of dallying over choice of colours, I settled on traditional pink flowers and brown bark of tree.

Tatted in size 40 threads, it measures 4½ inches across.
Anchor Mercer Art. 4054 : pink - 052 ; brown 00352. I needed less than 2 full bobbins of pink and 1 full bobbin of brown.
Techniques : 2 shuttles , thrown rings, mock ring with thrown rings.

I cut and joined for each round.

Started the last round with brown thrown ring instead of the sakuras.
Click here for the free pattern, and also to view more of her exquisite tatting.
I thoroughly enjoyed tatting this !

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Homemade Shuttles

And on a totally different note, now that I can do beads, who knows when I might need a large shuttle to load beads ?! Couldn’t find them on Amazon, so Pinterest to my rescue !

Last year, Tamara had requested testers for her prototype cardboard shuttles on Craftree and this is what I rustled up within a few minutes, using doubled-up cardstock. Crudely made, but worked well enough to give her feedback and suggestions. I was too ashamed to post, coz Eliz had soon made a perfect set!

This time I cut out the sides from an empty L’Oreal shampoo bottle - plastic. And for the central post I used an adaptation of Tamara’s method, with cardstock – merely folding 2 rectangles at both ends and gluing them all. Sandpapered the sides a bit. Still crude, but feels good to know that it is do-able. Needs to be adorned and tested; all that for later. For now, it seems to be holding up fine.

I've placed a Pony shuttle beside it to compare size.

Hey, it just occurred to me that this being the last day of the month would’ve qualified for the pinterest challenge ;-D

 Many thanks to all the designers for sharing their skills ! 

happy tatting everyone !

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