More New Designs

Wally has her 4th motif posted, the center of a bigger design that she called "Pharaonic Sun" . It's going to be discussed on the Online Tatting Class later this year. Ruth has added a celtic "R" to her page. Janet has added several new variations of the Tat-Along motif including a celtic snowflake. Sharol has completed her 4th sun motif. Jon has another bookmark posted. This one in green and white used SLT to keep the colours aligned and has an outer row of overlapping chains. Kathy used a variegated thread from an exchange to tat this motif from a 1959 Workbasket pattern that she modified using a second shuttle. Lori has just completed a six inch motif in size 40 thread all in one round. Donna has sorted out some problems with her blog and posted another variation of her first design.

Ruth has already reached her goal of tatting 25 Celtic motives and she's taking pre-orders for the book. We haven't been shown motives 16-25, is Ruth going to keep us guessing? Dawn has added a tatted basket. Clyde has completed 15 large motives and 5 small ones for his tablecloth. I think I read somewhere that this cloth was going to take 150 motives? It would certainly take me longer than one year to complete it. Riet has posted a cute bookmark done in a variegated thread. Barbara the Sanguine Tatter has completed her first motif in a variegated lilac thread. She has plans to do all 25 motives in this colour and applique them to a pashmina shawl for her mother. Target completion date Mother's Day. Terry has posted a tree done from one of Maus' patterns and she used 144 beads on it. Snowy has joined us and already has her first 2 motives completed.

Wally has an interesting navy and white ring and chain motif posted. Werner has added some wee butterflies to his collection. Sharol has another sun motif done. Jon has a purple and white bookmark with a split ring centre and she has cleverly done SLT to alternate the colour. Also posted is a small heart motif. Riet posted project 4 an edging and 5 a round motif using the daisy picot technique which gave a diferent look to the front and back of the motif. Kristie has entered some earrings and a hens and chicks insert for her brother to use on small wooden jewellery boxes he makes. Sharon has finally entered the challenge with snowflakes, hearts and butterflies.

Now 29 participants

Ruth has a Double Celtic Ribbon Edging and monkeyed around with another little doodle. Riet has joined the challenge and already has 3 motives posted including the lovely bookmark shown and some butterflies that take 3 shuttles. Lori has her first motive up, a five point star. Donata has posted a dimpled ring medallion, but she wants 8 repeats instead of 12 and will be re-doing it. Fani lost a lot of her books in Katrina's flood and wanted to participate but had nothing to work from until her hubby bought her Vida Sunderman's Tatted Snowflakes. She already has 2 done and posted.

Wow! Look at all these new entries!

Ruth has been busy again and added 3 new motives to her celtic line. The spearhead pendant necklace, the letter "G" in plaid and a simple but effective Ribbon Weave Edging. Gail has tatted the Mary Konior's large cross and she's wondering if it could be done as a square motif and worked into a table runner. Lynda has a 9 point medallion done and Sharol has her second sun motif posted. Jan surprised herself by creating her first design. Diana has changed her blog address and posted her first 2 motives. Mark has posted his first entry. Hey, Mark this is a motif challenge not a doily challenge :-) What a lot of colour and pizazz! Jon has done several variations of the motif from Wally's Tat-Along page. Kathy is working with the threads she received in the thread exchange and already has 3 motives posted along with the information on the threads.

It would be nice to include pictures from the websites here, but in order to showcase all your lovlies, I need your permission. It wasn't one of the things, that was planned ahead of time, but I've added a note under the guidelines, so that from now on, when I see something different and special, I can just insert it, unless I get a note from you asking me NOT to show it. Ruth's picture was shown earlier because she gave permission for it to be used. I'm trying to include the links with each update, but if people are just surfing through they don't always have time to check out each page and that's a shame because there's lots of eye candy showing up.

Today's entries are brought to you by the letter "T"

Sesame Street fans will understand when they hear that today's entries are brought to you by the letter "T". That's number 12 of the Celtic motives done by Ruth. Wally has a new motif posted that uses only chains. Gail posted an eye popping celtic motif. Shall we dare her to make it into a flower garden mat? Jan has corrected a mistake in her 2nd motif.

Did you notice the colour change on the links? I thought it would make it easier to visit the sites and see what's new.

As you visit these web pages to see the progress, don't be afraid to stop and add a comment. Whether you are a beginner just learning how to tat or an accomplished designer, those comments are appreciated. People like to know that others are visiting their pages and they like to hear how other people see their work. You may have a suggestion that will improve the look of their tatting, an easier method of doing the same thing or you might just want to say you like it. All of the comments are worth while, they help us to improve and encourage us to keep up the good work.

By the way, you don't have to tell me when you have a new motif posted. I'm checking the pages and posting the changes I see here. Actually, you all seem to be having so much fun, I can't wait to get started. It is taking an enormous amount of discipline to keep plodding away on the newsletter when I'm itching to be designing motives.

Anyone wanting to join the challenge can just add a comment by clicking on the link below or sending an e-mail to tatdlace#gagechek.com changing the # to @. Remember to give me the address for your blog so that I can add it to the links on the right.

Lots of lovely lace

Eva has her first motif posted It's a pattern from an old Swedish magazine that she plans to use on a Christmas card. Werner has posted a geometric design from an old German book. Marie has 2 more square motives she's considering for her table runner. Janet has a red, white and blue motif done. Dawn has her sqaure motif done in a lovely variegated thread. Clyde is on his 9th tablecloth motif and it's already 42x5 inches. Way to go tatters, everything looks wonderful!

Busy, Busy Tatters

We have 16 people already entered in the challenge and several more have written to tell me they are in the process of setting up a blog. There's lots of tatting being done. Ruth is on her 11th celtic design but she has already stated that she wants all 25 done in 2 weeks. Marie is working on a tablerunner and checking out some square motives with that in mind. Gail's third motif is a Hens and Chicks cross. Dawn has posted a cute square motif and she's found the mistake in a previous motif. Sharol is working on 25 motives related to the sun, there are lots of interesting possibilities there! Jan has been away from tatting for a while and the Challenge has given her a reason to start again. Arlene has plans for a variety of motives like the ones she has posted. Clyde is working on a tablecloth.

More New Motives

Werner has chosen to do several different types of motives and he has begun by doing a motif with a combination of crochet and tatting. Sue has been working on some paisley pieces that are coming along nicely. Janet has added a wee angel to her collection and a little wreath with berries.

Progress

It looks like several people are off to a good start. Janet has a couple of motives already done using variations of the motif from Wally's Tat-Along site. Wally has really challenged herself. In addition to creating the motif for her Tat-Along site in both English and Spanish and doing 100 (that isn't a mis-print she's working on 100) tatted motives already, she is also doing the 25 Motif Challenge and has added lovely beaded motif on her blog. Gail has been retatting the TAT artisan celtic motif because it just isn't quite right so she has decided to join us. Ruth, is a runaway winner for her fast start on this challenge and is already on her 6th celtic design pictured here. Way to go everyone!

25 Motif Challenge Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for the 25 Motif Challenge. Some people want to tat 25 new designs and some just want to tat 25 motives. So here's your sign-up page and your instructions.
You need a blog, photo album or web page to show off your work. So that we can all see how you are progressing send an e-mail to this site or just add the information to the comments. Your link will be added to those shown on this blog and then other people can add the link to their blogs as well.

On your blog state how you are approaching the challenge.
For example you might say:

- I'm going to design 5 hearts, 5 snowflakes, 5 butterflies, 5 crosses and 5 pairs of earrings.

Or you might say:

-I'm going to tat 25 motives from a published pattern by M. Riego and join them together to make a mat.

You decide what you'd like to do and we'll cheer you on as you meet you goal.

People have busy lives so this challenge will go on for the next calendar year. If you can meet your challenge in one month, that's terrific and we'll applaud your progress. We may even encourage you to do it all over again and try for something even more challenging! If you work full time, have family obligations that take a lot of you leisure time and manage after 1 year to only get half way to your goal, we'll applaud your attempt and encourage you to continue on.

What to show on your blog.
Pictures let us see how you are doing so we want to see how you're coming along. Some of your pictures may be of perfect, lovely creations, some of them may be of things that you tried, that didn't work out. Ask any designer and they'll tell you they learn more from their failures than they do from their successes. A project that doesn't work out shows you how NOT to do something. Their might be only one workable way to do the project you are tatting you might have discovered 1 of 5 ways it doesn't work. Congratulations, you have only 4 more possible mistakes before you find the one that does work.

If you want to share the pattern for your creations you are welcome to do so, the tatting community will be all the richer for it. Make sure that your copyright information is properly shown on each pattern. However, you are not obligated to show that pattern so you can use your own discretion. After we have completed the challenge we may collectively choose to publish what we have created, or some of us may discover that we have a real flair for designing and choose to put our designs in print. There are many possibilities, but we have a whole year to think about that and discuss it.

What not to show on your blog.
You can show things that you have tatted from a published pattern and you can modify a published pattern and show us what you have done and how you have modified it to produce your tatted work. You may NOT show a published pattern although you can provide a link to the author's original work if there is one. There is a difference between the lace you tat from a pattern and the pattern itself. If the pattern isn't yours don't show it unless you have the author's permission.

You can freely use public domain patterns as a jumping off point for creating new patterns. Often the best way to learn is to start with someone else's design and make a change to it. Public domain patterns are great for that purpose and can give you a framework to work from.

Being a designer
When you begin creating your own designs you are often so excited to share them with other people, and to feel the gratification of knowing that other people like your work, that you don't think about protecting your intellectual property. Would you buy a book that has 25 designs in it? Most tatters would. One lone motif design wouldn't make a book, but a year from now you may have 25 new creations all your own. Having produced that much original lace will change your thinking. You will have sweated and agonized over some of it and other pieces will have just flowed from your fingers. A year from now you may be ready to publish a book.

So, whether you think you are the next M. Riego or not, when you have created a new piece, write it out. Write down how you got from start to finish, in a way that other people can also tat your designs. In other words, treat it as if you were going to publish the design even if you don't. If you don't ever publish, that's OK, but at least there will be a written record of what you did. Write out your pattern as soon after you have completed it as you can. What you can do from memory today, you will have to reproduce by counting stitches a month from now. If you DO decide to publish you won't want to have to go back a year from now and count stitches on 25 pieces so that you can get your book printed.

Whatever you do, have fun and we'll all enjoy the process together.

NOTE: From time to time the it's nice to showcase what people have been working on. To protect copyrighted work, Blogger will not allow just linking to the image in your blog/web page/photo album so it is necessary to copy the image to post it here. Some people have scanned several motives together and in order to show only one motif, the picture needs to be cropped. To make things simpler it will be assumed that you DO want to show off what you are working on. If you don't want your images to be shown here, please write and advise me not to show it. This isn't an attempt to take anything from anyone or change anything belonging to anyone, it just makes it simpler to add pictures here so that people just popping in, can get a taste of what you are doing and hopefully they will take the time to visit your blog and see all of your creations.