Starting with Stawasz for the Sale

The annual sale held by my parents' church was this weekend. I didn't tat as much for it this year as I normally do, but that's probably a good thing as there were several items leftover from previous years. Several of those items sold this time around.

I find it's best for me to start making things for the next year's sale around now, when I'm thinking about it. I wanted to try something from Jan Stawasz's book that I just got, too. It occurred to me that I could make a few small pictures, stitch them onto fabric, and put them on those self-adhesive cardboard backings like I did with the two items for Klara. The buyers will of course have to frame them themselves, but I will make sure they are all standard sizes so they can use ordinary inexpensive frames you can buy anywhere.

So the first thing I've made from the Stawasz book is the Flower Pot I.

Here I've just scanned it with a piece of construction paper behind it. I'm planning to sew it onto a piece of royal blue fabric I happen to have. It's tatted in white size 20 Lizbeth, and will fit in a 6x8 inch frame.

I'll probably do another one (or maybe the other flower pot in the book) in colored threads, but I kind of like the way it looks in simple white. I've also got ideas about using some designs from Lindsay Rogers' book Tatting Collage, and probably some freestyle tatting of my own as well. We'll see what really ends up happening, but this is a nice start.

Canopy Bookmark

Here's another from Martha Ess's Playing with Picots book.

This is the "Canopy" bookmark. I used Lizbeth color 159 Easter Eggs, and I think this pattern looks terrific in a variegated thread. I probably should have scanned it with a darker background, but I think the pastels look very fresh and pretty.

I usually put my tail at the top of the bookmark, but I wanted to do it without cutting the threads, so this is how it ended up. OTOH, it also looks pretty good upside-down.

When you turn it this way, my tail looks like a thistle head. Kind of cool, huh?

Found It!

I found the ball of Wedgewood Dark in size 20 that I was looking for a few weeks ago. And it was in a place I had definitely looked in at least three times already. I would blame the Borrowers, except they don't usually return things.

So naturally, I had to immediately put it to use with the Blue River Glades. I was going to make a Fandango bookmark in this combination, and I still will someday, but for now I needed something that would work up a little faster. Also, I wanted to get into Martha Ess's Playing with Picots book that I just got.

The pattern is "Mirror, Mirror", which I thought was apropos as I've been watching the show Once Upon a Time on Netflix while I tat lately.

As I usually do with bookmarks, I added my own tail and improvised the end of it with a little doo-bob inspired by the pattern. Mostly it came out well, except for the very end. I decided to finish it with a double-core SSSR so I wouldn't have to work in the ends. Well and good, but I also decided I should knot the threads together first so the second thread would be more secure. The knot ended up just being another lock stitch, so the SSSR doesn't sit right against the rest of the doo-bob like I wanted it to, and it's a little off-center. It doesn't look too bad in the scan, but in person it looks kind of silly. Next time I'll take the risk and skip the knot.

On a different subject, does anyone know what this is? It belongs to a family friend, but she doesn't know anything about it. My first guess is hairpin lace, but I don't know whether that can be made round.

I Love This Pendant!

I'm really quite proud of the pendant I designed a couple of weeks ago. I just tatted it again (yes, Diane, I did go shopping, I had to get more of those embellishments :)) in different colors.

The threads here are "PTG Surprise" HDT from Tat-ilicious, and Lizbeth color 659 Periwinkle, which turns out to be a perfect match for the HDT. They are size 40.

Do you know how to tell when a cat has fully reached adulthood? You can untwist a skein of HDT and wind it onto a bobbin while he sleeps on your lap.

When he was a kitten, I would have to shut him in the other room to be able to prepare a new skein of thread. This is much nicer. But don't worry, Gian, he did borrow a tube of beads yesterday. He loves the way the beads rattle around, and the way the tube rolls on the bathroom floor.

Oh, and did you hear? LadyShuttleMaker is hosting a new TIAS! For anyone new to the online tatting community, that's Tat It and See. She'll release the a little bit of the pattern at a time, every few days. You don't know what you're tatting till it's done. Part of the fun is guessing what it is, and reading everyone else's guesses. It starts September 23, so get ready!

Bookmark and Books

Holy cow! Many thanks to the 768 people who have visited my new pattern page in the last 40 hours! And to the 697 of you who couldn't actually get to the patterns, I am so sorry! I have now fixed my settings on Keep and Save so that my patterns are publicly shared, so you'll be able to see them now. If you couldn't get to the patterns before, please try again!

A few weeks ago, I posted this bookmark, and I commented that the Tat-ilicious HDT would also look great in Jon's Chinese Coin bookmark. I still think so, but I opted not to make it at this time, because I realized I already have a Chinese Coin bookmark in a purple variegated thread-- a pastel set of purples, but still. I decided it would be better to choose a different pattern.

This is "Interlocked" by Karey Solomon, from her book Tat Marks the Spot. I altered the second end (top) because I was running out of thread. Not that I don't have more of it, but I didn't feel like winding more on the shuttle. According to the pattern, the top should have looked just like the bottom, and if I had done that I would also have added a tail. Instead, I improvised a sort of crown at the top which I think makes it look finished enough, and took almost exactly as much thread as I had left.

I have to admit, it took me a while to finish this one. It is all rings, and all of them except at the two ends are identical. I think it looks very nice in this particular thread, but to be honest, it wasn't that much fun to tat. I like more variety in a pattern when I'm working it. It was worth it, though. I really like the end result.

I got a couple of fabulous packages in the mail yesterday, one from Handy Hands and one from Martha Ess.

I think I might be able to find a pattern or two to tat.

New Pattern Page

I've been meaning to do this for a while. I've gotten all my patterns uploaded as pdf's, and created a page where you can download them all. See the "My Tatting Patterns" tab at the top of the page.

"Angels in the Snow" will still be sold by e-mail. As I learn my way around the pdf hosting site, I might be able to figure out a way to make a file accessible only after a payment has been made; or I might have to be a business user to do that. For now, e-mail is still the easiest way to do it.

Everything else is free, so far.

Update: I fixed it so the files are publicly shared, so now you can actually see the patterns! Thanks, Ladytats, for pointing this out.

What I Did at Jury Duty

I was only at jury duty for a couple of hours on Friday, so I didn't get that much tatting done. Then I had other things to do over the weekend, but the tatting did eventually get finished and blocked, and is now ready for presentation.

I wanted to make a gift for my neighbor, who has done several nice things for me lately. I immediately thought of the little sachet bags I've been making, although instead of the insect repellent variety, I decided to fill it with things that smell nice just because (although the bay leaves and rosemary I've been using for myself certainly smell good too).

Here's the motif I used.

Obviously this scan was done before blocking, but I wanted to show what a single motif looks like before joining more. It is from the book Tatting Together Square Motifs by Iris Niebach, although most of the motifs in the book, including this one, are not designed by Iris. The designs come from a class in tatting design that Iris taught to a group of Danish tatters. This one was designed by Allis Norby Jensen.

Honestly, I had never really looked too much at this particular motif before, simply because the colors used for it in the model in the book are very drab and uninteresting to me. Usually when I'm choosing a tatting pattern I can see past the colors and just look at the design, but in this case it took me a very long time to be able to do that. I'm glad I finally did. The use of shoelace tricks in the second round makes for very interesting color play, even in a single motif. And the class assignment from which all the designs in this book are taken included a requirement that additional interesting patterns emerge when multiple motifs are joined.

So here are four of them together. The two colors now form whole new square and diamond patterns. I think it would be fascinating to extend it beyond four motifs. Nine or 16 of them could make a nice doily. It would depend, I suppose, on a person's attention span; too bad mine isn't that long....

Anyway, here it is on the bag.

Oh yeah, the thread colors are Lizbeth 624 Raspberry Pink Medium and 686 Seagreen Light. I went with size 80 to end up with a final product that would actually fit on the bag.