14 times 3 minus 14 times 3

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UPDATE : Oops, the equation should read 14 times 3 minus 7 times 3!

Continuing Ninetta Caruso's Girandolina di Farfalle Swirling Butterflies doily - Round 10 without the butterflies!

All my previous rounds and notes - https://tipsaroundthehome.blogspot.com/search?q=swirling+butterflies

How slow am I?! Ninetta started much later and finished way ahead - check out her exquisite 2nd version here.   

Round 10 : without butterflies - 33cms/13" in Anchor size 40

Techniques I used: fs/bs tatting, treble stitch, spiral rings, lock join, direct tatting (for brown chains only, hence 2 shuttles)

Giro, giro, giro (round, round, round)! 

So, Round 10 requires 14 motifs comprising 3 rounds. Half of these motifs have 3 butterflies, the center butterfly (Cedronella) being a separate motif joined later. Hoping to work at a faster pace, I decided to make all 3 butterflies individually and join later. Hence the 3rd round of each motif (green) could be worked with ball and shuttle instead of 3 threads.

Farfalle (butterflies) 

I did a trial to see if they could be tatted separately, and without tail ends to hide. In the pic they are joined to picots, but when I make them now, I will try to place them on the chain directly - to lower the height, and to decrease the overwhelming green.

And none of them will need any hiding ends!!! Although I think one might have to apply some fabric glue to keep the antennae from curling and distorting when washed. We'll see ....

TIP : Since adjacent motifs are unattached except at the base, they are floppy and interfered with my tatting. I solved this by tying with scrap threads and holding them together as a unit. Worked beautifully!

The scrap threads will be snipped after I finish with the butterflies.

Girotondo (round dance)

Despite the huge amount of tatting required, I did not get bored at all. There is so much variety in terms of techniques, directions, sequence, and colours, that it keeps me happy and engaged! And instead of doing the same round consecutively 14 times, I did them in batches of 3 or 4 motifs, working lighter colours at night.

 

Lasagna (yummy ;-p)

I enjoy playing with in-progress lace, especially layering. Ideas swirl around and spring out! So, this is the 14 motifs folded inwards, overlapping. Not sure what idea is swirling, but I do like the effect :-D

This is the same folded round against a white background. It is so difficult to get the colours look as good as in real. A photography course?

Minore (minor) TIPs :This may be unimportant, but sharing nonetheless since it is part of my journey. 

For the spiral ring round, I did not make a lock join for the last ring. Instead, when it came to joining the last to 1st spiral, I passed tail through the 1st, and back to the space where lock join was required, and then made a knot/lock join.

As with most of my knitting, etc., I try to avoid starting at the same point. Ditto with the light yellow rings. I started by joining to the 2nd/3rd last spiral ring instead of the last. 

Errori (mistakes)

One glaring mistake reared it's head all the way back in Round 3 (the green round)! Despite all the pics I've taken and worked on, the missing ring revealed itself only when I was attaching the the 1st motif of Round 10! 

Can you spot it in the above pic? I can't 'unsee' it now ;-/ Should I add it or let it be?

There are 3 other minor errors - 1 in the light yellow picoted spiral ring round (a picot short of the required 14); 1 less tds in one of the tds spiral rings; and 3rd in one of the 14 motifs where I made a ring (3-3+4) instead of (3+3). But neither is apparent. Oh, and not using a picot gauge means my picots are not all symmetrical.

The blue and cream really stand out against this polished wood background, although all other colours have dulled down!

Nessun picot, nessun aggancio (no picot, no hooking)

As in my 2018 tat-along version, I avoided the picot and joining between the 2 green rings. The joining picot did not seem to add any value. Instead it slowed me down, trying to join such tiny rings in this dark colour. 

Keeping the count same, here's how I worked them -

    small ring : 3 +(to 2nd round) 4.

    large ring : 5 +(to 2nd round) 6.

Okay, I'm trying to show off some Italian terms I learned (or Googled) from the pattern! Hopefully some recognition, retention and recall will happen in future ;-P One can only admire how wonderfully adept Ninetta is at English - all self-learnt! 

I think this is my penultimate post on the doily. The next will be when it is all completed. 

3rd times a charm

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 continuing Ninetta Caruso's Swirling Butterflies doily - rounds 6 to 9 ... 

All my previous posts on this work in progress with notes - https://tipsaroundthehome.blogspot.com/search?q=swirling+butterflies

Round 6 : 15.5 cms in Anchor size 40, worked counterclockwise with one shuttle only.

Techniques - spiral ring, decorative picots, treble stitch (tds), lock join (substituted with a DYJ variation)

This round consists only of spiral rings with long decorative picots and a single tds. I asked Ninetta about that single tds -- it is a clever visual effect to maintain same height!

This light yellow colour was a compromise colour although Ninetta approved early on, and later even my hubby liked it a lot, despite my continuing doubts midways

My first choice was this dark green in order to frame the large floral design. Unfortunately the thread turned out to be very difficult to work spiral rings! Notice the ugly bare thread and distorted rings in the inset above?! Not to mention eyesight difficulty in tatting with a dark colour

TIP : Quality of thread is very important to work spiral rings. The stitches should slide smoothly so that the ring closes easily without any tug on thread between rings.

The yellow was a charm - worked like a breeze! Especially since I did not use any picot gauge.

TIP : There are 13 long picots and a 14th vsp for the last treble stitch. I made All 14 picots long. 

TIP : In order to avoid counting back all the picots, this coiless safety pin marked the picot (7th) on which a lock join needs to be made to coil the ring.

During my failed green trial, in order to increase stability (and for peace of mind), I altered the lock join to a variation of the Dora Young Join (DYJ) and decided to continue with it in the yellow version.

Dora Young Join (DYJ) variation - Start with making a lock join, but instead of pulling shuttle thread to tension it, tug at the loop thread that is at the back of work (like we do for the DYJ and CWJ) to remove slack, In next step, pass shuttle again through the open loop, front to back, and tension.  

I'll have to try it with thicker thread to see how it looks up close. 

This round is quite floppy with rings tending to dance and twirl since there are 7 unattached rings in between. I had to be real careful to keep them facing correctly when attaching 8th ring to previous round.

Rounds 7, 8, 9 : 17.5cms, 19.5cms, 21.5cms in Anchor size 40 worked counterclockwise. 2 shuttles, ctm.

Techniques - fs/bs tatting, split chain, split ring (all 3 optional).

These 3 rounds are worked continuously, climbing out with a split chain and into the next round with a split ring. With only 2 SRs, I decided to work with 1 shuttle and ball.

All 3 rounds are identical!

Ninetta warned us that rounds 7 & 8 ruffle but settle after round 9. The waves after round 7 already seem to be flattening as round 8 gets underway. 

Ruffling has decreased even more along the portion where round 9 portion has been made.

I blocked (rolling pin) only after completing all 3 rounds.

Voila! Flattened! 3rd time was such a charm!

Working 3 identical rounds consecutively could've been boring, but it was truly Fascinating watching the taming of the ruffles!

Got me wondering if there was any other way to keep it flat and avoid ruffling. Here are my thoughts on the Design Options -

1. start with shorter chains and increase the number of stitches (1 or 2 ds per outer round) ; 

2. include stabilising picot after 2 & 1 ds, to link adjacent chains in rounds 7 & 8 respectively.

3. progressively increase ring size in subsequent rounds.

All options come with their visual consequences - it all depends on what the designer is going for!

The next round consists of individual 3-round motifs very similar to the center. (7x2) motifs will take some time to tat. The very last round is simple rings, chains, and thrown rings.

I had intended to keep blogging as I worked this doily on the side. But I get so engrossed and Love the tat, that all blogging is side-lined. Hopefully I'll squeeze in a few posts this time.

4 plus 1 is 5

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This is the start to Ninetta Caruso's Swirling Butterflies doily which I am privileged to test tat. If you remember, she had posted these 3 rounds as a tat-along in which I participated here.
See all her related posts here.

This time I am working in Anchor size 40.
Round1 - 2.5cms worked clockwise with shuttle and ball;
Round2 - 4.5cms worked from right to left (counterclockwise) with single shuttle.
Techniques - spiral rings, treble tatting

2nd round is worked first, but joined into a circle only after the 1st round is completed. It is such fun to tame the linear spiral rings braid into a circle!

Round3 is worked with 3 threads due to this colour placement. However she also gives the option to work it with 2 threads. This is where my confusion arose. Her diagram says 4ds chain before and after the butterfly, but her 2-thread pictorial showed 5ds chains. Hmmm, turns out in the former there is 1ds made on either end, with the blue thread, thus equaling 5ds! Back to kindergarten....

All my notes are in the above link.
The butterflies are worked from the back. The chains have 2 core threads, and is easier to work as encapsulation or direct tatting (reverse/unflipped stitches)  moving counterclockwise.

With butterflies, it measures 7.5cms and without butterflies this would be 6cms across.
Techniques - treble tatting, encapsulation, treble join (layered)

Now to continue with the next rounds.


All my projects are on hold as I focus on this doily. But I have decided on the colour scheme Ruth Perry's bookmark adaptation as a mat. I might have to discard the length already made in case there is too much difference in the thickness of threads.

A gorgeous hanky edging from Kathleen Minniti is also in queue!

Goldilocks meets a friend

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Remember how I couldn’t introduce you to Goldilocks since she was already in bed? 

The wait is over. Meet Goldilocks and her friend, Elana! 

Well, opposites attract again (see comments here)! Gold / silver; tiny / large; warm / cool; quick project / long project; AND our two friendly designers from different hemispheres!

Goldilocks is actually Ninetta’s Valentine earrings shared here. 

Closing the spiral ring using metallic thread was a tad dicey. Anyway, after making it with single shuttle, I switched the shuttle thread to regular cotton size 20, using gold for the visible stitches.

Lenka shared some nice pics on how to add beads in spiral rings. Do check out her beautiful applications of the spiral rings. 

Red Rose metallic gold size 20 & Anchor size 20. size 16 seed bead & crystal teardrop.

2+ cms across & 3+ cms long without teardrop.

Jane McLellan’s Elana has long been on my to-tat list. It is such an elegant pattern.

And I wanted to stick with blue and white. This is actually my 2^nd attempt; the first being left aside after 4 repeats for 2 reasons. But read what happened in next post here. (Update)

Notice the missing chain in first round? I used the double ring & chain sequence. And the rings on the back are 5-5-5.

I used bead as picot gauge method to load bead with a crochet hook only when it was time to link. Yet the small Pony shuttle bobbin had to be loaded twice.

Adjacent Ankars motifs are slightly tightly packed with some overlap – perhaps my seed bead was too large?

But I love how it looks despite the thick white thread! And finally another struck off the unending list

Blue glass gem - 2¼ cms x ½ cm high. The pebble is not absolutely clear but has shaken snowglobe effect.  Anchor white 20.  3½" diameter

2 projects, but so many techniques have been incorporated! My knid of tatting ;-P

And now that I have my beads and gems out, there are a couple more projects queued ;-D

twist n twirl, spiral n swirl

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doily tat-along and pictorial

Completed the tat-along a week back but too many presentations swirling around in my compy vying for attention! Without much ado, let me 'jive' in ….

Swirling Butterflies Tat-along 

The final round was shared by Ninetta here.

My earlier rounds are posted here.

I made a few tiny tweaks and here are my notes –

1. Treble as a twisted picot : The 2^nd part of a treble is actually just a twisted picot!!! Well, well, well. I tried it on some of the tds. Pictorial at the end.

2. The double leaves : It is a very clever design where the leaves are asymmetrical but with graduated segments – from 3ds through to 6ds - creating a swirl of their own!

But my conjoined double leaves just wouldn’t stay flat. Finally I settled with a ring of (3+3) and 2^nd ring (4+6), leaving them unattached to each other.

3. Bare thread under the butterfly. My little indolence served 2 purposes :

visually, I felt that the entire body on the twig made it seem more like a caterpillar ; tatting the butterfly was normal - only the double stitches of 1^st & last trebles were encapsulated (2 core threads).
And instead of 3 shuttles,  I used a ball and shuttle,  ctm, for green, and 2nd shuttle for pink.

4. An idea – one can make the butterflies separately (single shuttle only – see here) and join to twig normally. Which means, we work the twig with shuttle and ball only! But the butterfly will need 2 picots on core thread held by paperclip.

5. Long picots made and snipped for the antennae.

6. Mutilated Wing – I made only 4tds on the wing instead of 5tds. I did not count the TJ (treble join) as a tds, hence the goof-up. Some of the butterflies look like elephants to me! If I hadn’t blogged, it would’ve gone unnoticed even now ;-P

7. Directional or fs/bs tatting: My way of doing the treble backside is simple – only work the ds part of it backside, keeping the rolled part as usual. Ninetta shared her method here. Always good to have choices!

8. Measurement : Worked in Anchor size 20 threads, the doily works to 4” with butterfly ; and 3” if one leaves out the butterflies.

9. Techniques used : fs/bs tatting, tds (treble tat stitch), spiral rings, floating/thrown rings, encapsulation (direct tatting with unflipped stitches), 3-shuttle tatting (I used 2 shuttles and a ball).

10. Spiral Rings : I believe the best effect of tds is in these spiral rings!

There’s a new video on how to tat the treble by Victats. 

This new stitch is really catching on J 

The fun part is that it can do Everything that a normal double stitch does - 

including half tds, padded tds, and picots of all kinds !

For those who consider the treble a bit of a mystery, perhaps it’s similarity to a twisted picot will help? Most of us know of or have done the twisted picot. So, here’s how we can use the same movements to make the 2^nd part of a treble tat stitch !!

Treble Tat Stitch worked as a Twisted Picot

or
Twisted Picot In the Treble Stitch !
Click on any image for enlarged view.
This is a alternate method of working the 2nd part of a treble stitch. 
It can be used as an eye-opener to show the 'common threads' running through 
seemingly different tatting techniques.  

4 tds can be seen on a chain, of which the first 2 were made normally 

and the next 2 were made using the twisted picot method/movement.
See Twisted Picot video here.

 1. Start next tds with a double stitch

 2. Pull loop through picot (not shown), tighten and pull another loop through it.
BUT do Not pass shuttle through this loop.

3. Twirl shuttle and Twist loop ! 
Now here’s where the twisting starts and the direction is very important. 

Hook/hold the loop on the shuttle and
rotate the shuttle clockwise like a ferris wheel – 
moving towards us from the lower side and away from us on the upper side. 

The loop gets twisted once.

If we rotate in counterclockwise direction, this is how the tds turns out -

 4. Repeat this movement again and now there are 2 twists in the loop.

 5. Repeat this movement a 3^rd time so that we have 3 twists in the loop.
Keep the loop hooked at all times to avoid untwisting.

 6. Now pass the shuttle through the loop. 
This is the tricky part since the loop should open up sufficiently to allow shuttle to pass through.

If needed, tug the loop to lengthen it.

 7. Start pulling the ball thread to close the twisted loop. 

Then pull the shuttle/core thread to tension the stitch.

 8. Treble stitch all snugged and complete using the twisted picot method!

 9. 3 more trebles made in similar manner.

This method works well with this size 10 knitting cotton as well as Anchor size 20 threads. Does it work equally well for finer threads? Try it and let us know J

UPDATE : Check out My Tutorials page for more Treble tatting pictorials, variations and analyses 

That’s it for now, but I am super excited to show you my perfect Cluny leaf – finally happy with it – and absolutely no colour blips on either end. Will share the trick soon. 

change of perspective

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tatting direction can be deceptive;

we need a change of perspective !

In some earlier projects, I’ve encountered the switch in rounds – where we tat a latter round first and then attach the inner round on the go. But in the swirling butterflies tat-along, Ninetta asked us to keep the round open (blue in this case). And then we tat the inner flower round. 

I absolutely Loved how the inner round pulled in the blue one around itself! Kind of fun to watch it curve into shape…  And the design possibility – how about a broad wave?!

The blue 'row' with spiral rings is worked from right to left 

and the inner yellow round is worked clockwise.

The second spiral ring at the bottom is actually a scmr to add new thread.

Worked in Anchor size 20 threads

Yellow flower round ~ 3½ cms

Blue swirling clouds round 5½ cms

7®87®87®8

When I first tatted Jane's leaf braid, I made a mistake in the picot placement, which was noticed months/years later. Clearly it was tatted incorrectly, yet my confusion persisted. I finally got perspective when I worked the braid again for the hanky.

This is what happens :

Visually, the rings appear to be made from right to left because the teardrop shape seems to have it's 'head' facing left (& tail towards the right end). Remember the ‘ring as a fish’?

But these are split rings and the tatting works from left to right! We start the ring from left and close/end on the right. 

AHA! Yes, it seems at this advanced stage I should’ve figured it out long ago. But split rings can be tricky in terms of direction change, etc. Hey, I'm allowed to be flaky, right?!

leaning towers

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err, leaning trebles to be accurate!

An omission that led to a variation of the treble/tds.

Here’s the story –

Ninetta is starting a tat-along for her latest piece with those swirls and butterflies. I chose my colour palate and started the round with spiral rings in blue.

Then it hit me and I went to check on my earlier trial. Remember this pink one where the spiral rings are in tds (treble tatting), supposedly?

Well, turns out I made an error causing the stitch to slant! Compare it with the correct formation (blue). In both versions, the rings have identical stitch count.

In the pink, I inadvertently skipped steps 4 & 5, passing the shuttle directly through the first loop itself as in step #6. Refer to pictorial here. 

Wishing to continue with the “crochet saga” (tongue-firmly-in-cheek), 

Ninetta has christened it the half treble.

No wonder it tatted up so much quicker ;-P And no wonder I was having a tough time getting the stitch to lie stand straight (which it still didn't!).

It is visually distinct (reminds me even more of her vapor picot), appears denser, with the stitch slanting and a wavy outline.

More tds variations are described here

Back to the tat-along... the shuttle was running out of blue thread on the 13^th ring. This method worked splendidly again – using a scmr. With no bare thread between rings, it was easy to tat over the tails on opposite side as I went along – nothing to sew later. So far it is still a braid and needs to be joined back to first ring. With pearls/beads, it would make a gorgeous bracelet or choker!  Waiting for the next rounds to show up on Ninetta’s blog, shuttles on the go :-)

Click on the treble tatting label for all my tds posts.