Snowflakes, Polar Bears, Butterflies and Coasters

Wendy shows how a wrist bag is used to hold the ball of thread so that you can carry it on your wrist as you work. She has found some crocheted hex shaped motives that she has made into girls' shirts and she's wondering if she should leave them as shirts or crochet skirts to go with them. I want to know hat the dimensions of the hexes are as I'm wondering how long it would take to do in tatting.

Sapna is enthusiastic about a new tatting pupil. Way to go Sapna.

Margaret was at the dentist's and the receptionist plans to come and learn tatting from her. Margaret had a chance to see some of her earlier work along side a later piece and she's surprised at how her work has improved.

Shay has posted her weekly cat picture and a story "gotcha" story of a lawyer who couldn't get away with it.

Barbara has come back to tatting after an absence and has discovered some new techniques. She joins the challenge with a couple of motives. The first one is from "Easy Tatting" and is done in Opera size 20 thread. The second motif is from "Tatted Easter Eggs" also done in Opera size 20 but this one is a light cream colour.

C4G has her first tatted snowflake done and being blocked. It's looking good. On Monday Mortaine taught herself how to needle tat AND shuttle tat (boy, is this lady good). She tatted 2 feet of ring and chain edging, did a motif for a swap and a whisper of lace to go on a fabric postcard. She came to the 25 Motif Challenge by way of Jane's TIAS where she had to learn split rings and split chains to work on the project. She's a natural I tell you, her first pieces don't even look like first pieces. Glad you found us Mortaine. Diane has been browsing through A Treasury of Design for Artists and Craftsmen by Gregory Mirow and sees lots of things that could be turned into tatting. The cover makes me want to see what's on the inside.

Pamela tatted Mark Myer's polar bear and here she shows him in his icy habitat. The thread is size 10 Coates Mercer Anchor. It's making me colder just looking at him.

Carol got tired of working on the gingerbread house, as awesome as it is, row after row of the same colour, same pattern, gets boring. So she took a look at the crochet flowers made from pull tabs that we saw on Wendy's blog earlier and did a version in tatting that could be used as a coaster. Clever.Clyde really is addicted to hand dyed threads. As soon as Marilee has a new batch, Clyde HAS to have it. Yup, he's addicted.

Marilee's latest colour "Tourmaline" also comes in a batch with slow colour changes. Quick colour changes are great on small projects but they can look choppy on larger projects. Slow colour changes let you enjoy the variegated threads without losing the design.

Laura did a variation of Mark's chocolate cherry cake only she used French Vanilla cake and cherry pie filling with cream cheese icing. These blogs are getting more fattening by the day. She started another snowflake working with the same rose centre as found in Denise Munoz' book but she decided to try her own outer rows. I love the look of it and one of the best ways to start designing your own patterns is to begin modifying an existing pattern. You obviously can't publish anything based on someone else's work, but you sure can learn how to design your own by "reverse engineering" theirs.

Charlene is still busy with cross stitching.

Marty has finished and tacked down a lovely butterfly edging and butterfly embellishment on a pink tie dyed onsie. Isn't it just adorable? Marty has also been persuaded to put her butterfly patterns down on paper and she shares one of them of her blog. It's brilliantly designed and looks like it would be easy to tat.

Melissa is continuing her tutorial on how to make a crazy quilt block.

Wally is working on the TIAS challenge. I thought it was looking like a hippopotamus until the latest edition.