Matilda

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I tatted this back in Dec 2017. It is a motif from Hye-oon Lee's book "Lovely tatting Doilies Fall & Winter". She generously shared the Matilda motif pattern with the Online Tatting Class in November – one with spiral chains, the other without.

Worked in Anchor size 40, in 2 contrasting colours, it works out to 2¼ inches.

One colour is made first with no attachments. Then the next colour is made, joining on the go to the previous rings.

The long chains overlap. Notice how the chains are not all equal in length? Reason is a little experiment I did.... 

Just for fun, I used Victorian sets for the chains going up/out, and Josephine chain/spiral tatting for the chains coming down/in. Turns out the former are longer!

DESIGN TIP : The spiral chains tat up tighter, hence shorter, than the Victorian set chains. 
Refer Chains in Shuttle Tatting sampler.

I hope Hye-oon is not too miffed with this little visually unsuccessful experiment. Many thanks for this uncommon pattern.

golden arches

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For the last several weeks I would see this Italian Tatting event announcement almost every time I logged in to facebook. (Lenore’s awareness ribbon is another part of it). Here, a vintage pattern was shared by Edda Gustalla and the only ‘rule’ was to keep the basic shape recognisable. She aptly calls it “A thread that unites”!

And I finally succumbed just for kicks. No, I am not entering it in the competition – horrors, it is hardly competition material! But it was a fun journey albeit slow due to all those beads!

Golden Arches Necklace

adaptation of Edda Gustalla’s vintage edging

‘a thread that unites’

1st  arch : a 2-repeat trial run with size 40 thread, no beads. (forgot to take a pic)

2nd arch : Red Rose size 20 metallic thread with beads. Trying to decide the colour of teardrops, etc. I used this method to make the onion rings in order to keep track of beads in each shuttle.

3^rd arch : A bit of stitch count tweak, and using red teardrops with the larger garnet, all of which were attached using Floating Beads method.

4^th arch : Finishing up. Sewed on gold beads to cover the open space under clovers. Added a ‘reflection’ above the teardrops, too.

Then strung more seed beads to make the chains on either side and add findings.

After this, I made 2 more short chains to complement the arch above and give the pendant a fuller look. However, these arches curve contrary to what I had in mind L 

Interestingly, the double-beaded chains took much longer to tat, having to pull out a bead from both shuttle and chain threads after each stitch. It was stop and go stop and go. Is there an easier way to do them?

I have written down the pattern (for my own notes) but will share only if somebody is truly interested. Pattern writing takes up way too much time and effort and currently I am employed in updating and reorganising the Tatting Resources page – another huge task.

So what would you change in this pendant/necklace to improve it?

teach me to count

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With shuttle in one hand and thread in the other (and toes curled in under me) how can I count on my fingers? Can you? No wonder I made mistakes... I need tutoring!

A while back I stumbled on to Liisa Maarit’s blog - Handmade by Liisa showcasing some beautiful lace along with pictorials and a few patterns.

I really liked her ‘rescued’ circular motif. So how many repeats can you count here? 9, right? Hmmm, that's 1 extra repeat extra! Irrespective, it turned out fine and lay flat.
Just over 5½ cms diameter in pearl cotton size 8 (white, & green  00225).

TIP : One can use Catherine Wheel Join in the 3^rd round for a more perfect circle. 
Here, I went with lock join followed by half stitch for a bit of floral arching.

In order to give it company I hunted through my books for a motif to go along and Lindsay Rogers' Repetition mat (with 9 repeats) in 'Mastering Tatting' appealed.

Worked in size 40 (shade 00368).

And guess what?? Yup, counting error Again. There are supposed to be 2 chains between clovers and I made one! So how many repeats did I need to complete the circle – 30!!!

The mistake led to some design-learning ...

DESIGN TIP :  Do you see how the little rings rise above?

If the rings were linked to each other through tiny picots close to the base (stabilising picots), it would’ve led to squishing and cupping. But since each ring was ‘free’ at the base, the little rings lifted above that constricting space. Textural effect!

I like the texture created. With beads, it could make a beautiful necklace! Looks nice as a collar, too.

Since it was meant to be a short round, I left the thread attached to ball. But shuttle ran out at 25th repeat. There was quite some length left, but not enough for a true ring.

TIP : So I used a slight variation of adding new thread within ring. I started SCMR with new shuttle thread acting as core, and old tail for stitches. The entire ring was done with the old tail. Then the tail ends were hidden in next 2 elements.

I now have to design/adapt rounds inside and out to make a snood. Sigh, and here I was going for something simple....

Many thanks to Liisa Maarit and apologies to Lyndsay Rogers