"But, really, why does anyone create? You feel a... a restlessness inside, a need to make something new, something no one has ever seen before. You want to add to the beauty and the richness of the world with a gift, an offering that is uniquely yours. It's an act of selfishness and generosity, all rolled into one."

-- Bruce Coville,
The Last Hunt

Monday, July 23, 2012

More in White

I liked the simplicity of the white thread on a colored ornament so much that I decided to do it again. This time I used Anne Bruvold's SSSR Angel and a small cross of my own design.


 If you have extremely sharp eyes, you may notice that the inner rows of the angels' skirts are each too long by one ring compared to the pattern. Here's what happened. I made the two angels, but didn't notice right away that I had made this mistake on the second one. I knew it wasn't sitting right, but figured I would just fix that when I pinned it down. Then I put them next to each other and realized that the first one's skirt was shorter and wider; that was when I started looking more closely and realized I had actually made a mistake on the second. I decided that, next to the cross, the longer skirt looked better, so I tatted another angel with the same "mistake" and used this pair for the ornament. The other, correctly made, angel will stand on its own.

It should be noted that you can't make the angel with this extra ring unless you are planning to pin it to something, because the skirt really doesn't work; the extra length of the middle two rows pushes it all out of proportion and it has to be held down to keep its shape. If you just tat it as written, of course, it works just fine.

As I have done in the past, I tatted these angels using normal split rings instead of SSSR's. You have to add a second thread eventually anyway to tat the body, so to me it makes more sense to start with two threads CTM; this gives you fewer ends to hide in the long run.

The cross is just three SCMR's followed by a row of split rings; each ring has a total of 12 stitches.

3 comments:

  1. Lovely, I love the angel and have made quite a few of them, Nice cross too.
    Margaret

    ReplyDelete
  2. Absolutely stunning ornament!!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the way the white stands out against the dark ornament; and the 'simpilicity' of the motifs is so appealing here. This is a great explanation of how you overcame a 'mistake' and actually improved the over-all total design!

    ReplyDelete