Beautiful, Wonderful, Gorgeous Tatting

One of the drawbacks of tatting is that it is time consuming and one of the benefits of this challenge is that it encourages people to keep tatting. Many of the folks who started thinking 25 was an enormous amount of tatting, have finished 25 motives and started 25 more. Along the way their skills have developed, as has their exposure to other peoples tatting and their introduction to new patterns, threads, and techniques. Several of the participants have been encouraged not only to tat, but to create their own thread colours and design their own patterns. Now we are seeing some of these tatters go on to produce their own tatting books. Isn't it amazing how much we can encourage one another just by participating in something as simple as this challenge?

Elizabeth has noticed a growing trend at the craft shows she attends of people who no longer associate tatting with something their elder relatives used to do. Anne has been travelling without her computer so she hasn't pictures to post although she has completed a tatted doily. She's wondering why packages keep appearing on her doorstep…..I'll bet we can guess.

Sapna has been tatting bookmarks. A LOT of bookmarks. She used Kersti's pattern and worked them all in beautiful Hand Dyed Threads. Iris Neibach's doily, Stella Alpina from her book "Fantasia" was tatted in a single day.
Iris' new book "Just for Fun" is now available from Lacis.
Bob has his next round robin project done and he shares the pattern for this split ring RicRac bookmark. Jeff tatted Mary Konior's Tatted Filet in Tatting With Visual Patterns using HDT and it appears to be another pattern where HDT isn't a good choice. Aileen is working on her mystery motif. It's still a mystery, at least to me. Joy discovered that the first 2 rounds of Mom's Pink Doily from Bestitched.com done in size 30 thread fits perfectly into an acrylic coaster. That's handy to know.I don't know how I missed it, especially since I thought it was so wonderfully clever, but I omitted Ellen's tatted apple in the last update. Maybe it had something to do with trying to do the updates at 3:00 AM when I'm not at my brightest. Barney is sure to be a favourite with the younger crowd. Now he needs a matching Baby Bop to keep him company. This tatted cross from Joy Botchlet's book Tatting Dimpled Rings, was a parting gift for a co-worker. Ais tatted Mary Konior's Anniversary pattern in Coats Chain Mercer Crochet No. 20. She's learning new things from these patterns and plans to tat some more of Mary's designs. Zarina joined the challenge on April 10th when I was in the midst of an "I don't have enough hours in the day" crisis so I missed adding her to the links list and consequently missed adding her her my regular run down. In the intervening 20 days she has tatted 14 motives. Just call her the lady with the smoking shuttles. Here's a run down of her tatting progress and I'm back tracking to February so you can see it all, beginning with some early pieces and some practice makes perfect pieces before going into some luscious HDT pieces.

Diane
Pamela
Jon has just printed her first book "Snowflakes Collection". There is ordering information on her blog.
Marilee
Laura
Marty
Melissa
Martha -Pics from Hector
Gina -Lots of pics from Hector