Butterflies, Eagles, Jewellery and Delicate Laces

Riet posts a picture of the wonderful nativity set she sets up until the Sunday after January 6. She also show us a picture of the ornament done for an exchange that has a tatted angel with holly leaves and berries suspended in a clear ball. The real angel of course in Nora.

Meme loves the harmony of this pattern by Teiko Fujito that she did a while ago in 2 colours.

Wendy tatted a very simple edging and then combined it with crochet to make 24 inches of marvelous raspberry and white edging. She's working on yards of yo-yo garland in green for St Patrick's day and the exchange quilt blocks are in.

Laurie finished some socks on her UFO list but forgot to take pictures for the blog before they were given away. There was snow and cross country skiing and another pair of socks got completed. Laurie sent Dream Catcher fabric postcard to Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and has just received a semi personal reply. Definitely Cool!

Connie posted her first attempt at covering a cabone ring using Jon's pattern but now that it's done she wishes that she had switched threads for the alternate rings to emphasize the heart shapes. Also posted is a slide show of the tatting she has done so far.

Sapna is looking forward to a new year full of promise and she's optimistic about the future.

Iris created an easy one shuttle earring design and she shares the pattern with us. How pretty they are, and how generous Iris is for sharing them. Iris has been working hard on her book and testing out her patterns looking for mistakes. She re-did this square one in her favourite colour of sand and as she reflected on it, it occurred to her that it was Sand, Sea and Sky.

Norma has embroidered a jeans bag and worked on a CQ block that she embellished with some tatting. She has also shown us some of the shuttle collection most of which have been made for her. See how smooth these shuttles look? These babies have been used.

Bob has created 2 new designs, a Maltese cross and a round design. He has included the pattern for both these motives on his blog. Aren't we fortunate to have so many generous tatters?

Bev has mounted her card for Mary Konior to be sent off to Sue and shows it here along with some of her shuttles. The tatting that has filled her time lately will be going on a denim bag and she plans to join in Jane's Tat It and See. She had to grab her tatting bag and hide it from little, no make that big, puppy teeth when her granddaughter visited over Christmas.

Kelly is enthusiastic about the "Take it Further " embroidery challenge.

Mary created a beautiful paper magnolia for her homemade cards.

Shay went home for the holidays and shares pictures of the journey.

Jeff has joined the challenge and it's nice to have another of our gentlemen tatters join in. His first posting is a wonderful golden eagle from the Be-stitched web site done is Flora size 20..
Diane fell on the ice and broke 2 bones near the wrist. She'll be in a cast for 6 weeks and then a brace, so no tatting for her.

Clyde has been tagged again and posts 7 weird or random facts.

Mark has another flower off his pillow and here are 3 different motives he did using the half ring braid. Two of the designs were done using Oliver Twist thread and the other with Valdani size 50. They all look gorgeous.

Laura has tatted a rainbow tree using Sherry's Grapefruit thread.Does that make it a Rainbow Grapefruit Sherbet tree? Laura was playing around with a design from the Blomqvist Persson book and got stuck. The other day she picked it up and started tatting with Marilee's Rhubarb Crisp and Sherry's Grapefruit and she has created her own unique design. Ah, Laura, I don't know how to tell you this, but now comes the hard part. You have to go back and document it. Then you have to do the same kind of things a bunch more times so that you can publish the patterns and we can all make our own rainbow trees full of tatting.

Marty is still designing butterflies and using Yellow DMC Cebelia size 30 thread. The first try was nearly perfect so she did it again and just tweaked in a little. Very pretty. The she did it again in Coats cotton quilting thread but she had a lot of difficulty getting the tiny rings to close. She wanted to try it with rayon thread but combined it with DMC size 80 to help keep it from stretching. The surprise is that the butterfly is almost the same size as the yellow one done in Cebelia.

Melissa found a lovely little tatted doily in an antique shop and she brought it home with her. She may use it as a doily or possibly add it to her crazy quilting. Melissa has created a series of lovely brooches made of silk ribbon embroidered roses on Dupioni silk for her Etsy shop.

Have you ever seen a shuttle bug? Sherry made the tatting bee for the TAT program and then she altered it a wee bit to create a cute winter bug.