Embellishing Scarves and Bags with Tatting

EeKoon is working on stitching and beading and knitting and is making a valiant, but apparently hopeless attempt at de-stashing. It seems to be a recurrent theme for many of us; take up hobby, obsess over hobby, look for ways to control obsession, repeat.

Melissa made the "Tudor Rose" motif in Lyn Morton's book "Tatting Patterns" in size 10 Cebelia. She plans on using it to decorate her bag for the Tatting Treasures from Trash challenge. Which reminds me, I need to get my bag made.

Sherry has been playing around with her lilac pattern trying different things. They all look good to me!

Wendy has been busy with lost of things like going to Vegas to visit her sister and buying a new house, but she managed to do a redwork embroidered Southern Belle for an exchange.

Anne has just joined the challenge and her blog is in Norwegian but she will be adding a section in English for those of us linguistically challenged. Anne bought some thread to use for the demos on her web page and decided to buy some more thread and knit a scarf with it. She's going to add tatted edgings on the ends and some tatted motifs to decorate it.

Jewellery, Miniatures and Miles of Lace

Mark found a tiny little charm that is perfect for some tatted miniatures that he has done. Mark is working on a lot of items for the upcoming shows and notes that smaller items sell better than large ones. They've been doing more wedding cakes a delight for the eye as well as the palate. How DO you find time for all these things?
Kathy has re posted more of the motives that she did for the challenge. She wasn't able to continue using her old blog so she has had to move everything to the new blog.
Elizabeth has created another lovely design that is beautiful in it's simplicity using what she calls a twisted stitch. I think another name for it might be a spiral stitch. A zigzag or ricrac stitch is created alternating the first half and second half of the doublestitch for a specified number of stitches.When you use only one half continually the line of the top of the stitch starts to coil around the core thread in a spiral. Whatever it's called it's given a really pretty effect to this design.Meme hasn't blogged for a while but she has been tatting and she shows us some of the earrings she's done. She had the unfortunate experience with one of her creations, the thread came undone after she was finished. Some people secure the knots at the ends of wearable items like bracelets, necklaces, and earrings with a tiny drop of glue or clear nail polish.

Laura finished her daughter's wedding hanky and I got a sneak peek at it. It's gorgeous and simply elegant.

Charlene's partner received her bookmark and now we have a picture of it. What a cute idea to tie beads on the tail. I love doing bookmarks but hate the time it takes to make the tassels. It always feels like they take more time than the tatting.

Sherry has been honoured as one of the Idaho artists in the Etsy Treasury. Congratulations Sherry.

Wendy has been collecting vintage threads and often finds lengths of edgings stored inside the balls. These are some of her collected threads.

Bookmarks Doilies and Pincushions

Arlene has tatted one Iris Niebach's designs called Cornelia and that finished her 25 Motives. Only now she's addicted to tatting motives and wondering if she should tat 25 more. OK, we'll be happy to see 25 more!

Clyde designed a little 5 inch doily to coordinate with the large one he just completed. He has again used hand dyed perle 12 cotton from New Zealand. What a perfect compliment to the larger doily.

Mark has been away camping and hiking but he did manage to create this marvelous leaf using pearl tatting over wire. He plans on doing another leaf design and hopes to get some stock built up before the shows later in the year. We're seeing lots of beautiful tatting, but what happened to the geisha?Sharon shows us what she did with 4 of the motives she designed. They were joined together and had a border added around the outside. This is one of the designs that were in the May Tatted Lace Pattern Collection newsletter. Is the whole greater than the sum of it's parts? I think so.Laura has almost finished tatting her daughter's wedding hanky, but she doesn't have a picture to show yet. A fire in her MIL's house has kept her busy. No one was injured but there are extensive repairs to be done.

Charlene has received another exchange bookmark. This one is a lovely daisy design.

Marty has been playing with more buttons and thread combinations and designs. Wow! You should see all the bookmarks she has come up with.Melissa used the circular edging to embellish a pin cushion and topped it off with alternating pearl beads and silk ribbon embroidery roses. It's very Victorian and very elegant.Sherry has posted an updated map showing where all of her shuttles have gone. Her personal goal is to have a shuttle in every state.

Wendy has joined the challenge and will be doing a lot of edgings because she wants to have lace available to use with projects. What projects? Wendy has just launched her online store - Vintage Threads and she a variety of hand made articles available such as baby items, head wraps, doll quilts, ornaments, pincushions using vintage materials and threads. Check out the gorgeous baby cap and fairy wings she did for her daughter. Wendy has already done a selection of edgings for the challenge and you'll want to take a minute and browse through her blog and web site as there's lots to see.

Lilacs and Butterflies and Rhubarb Pie

Lynda has been having some difficulties lately so that she hasn't been able to tat challenge motives. There was the Tatting Workshop in Spokane and pieces to get done for the county fair and she has plans to redo her leaf motif.

The blue doily Jon has been working on is 9 inches across now and she thinks the 2-3 rows she plans to add will make it about 15 inches across. Along with this and the crocheted tablecloth she has a number of works in progress.

Kathy has been busy, she just hasn't been posting her progress. She had to change blogs and she has re-posted some of her earlier motives and added a few new ones. The motives Kathy has been doing have been worked with threads she received in exchanges. She has kept a book with these motives, the information on the thread and who sent it to her. The thread for this motif is Lion Brane Lame metallic yarn, multi #960 and the pattern is from the October 1976 Workbasket.

Rhubarb pie. At least that's the colour of the hand dyed thread Marilee created and used to make these earrings.

Charlene received her exchange bookmark from Marty. We'll have to wait to see the one that Charlene sent out.

Melissa used ecru Cebelia thread to make an edging and she's joined it in a circle. Pretty, but now what are you going to do with it? Attach it to a circle of cloth to make a doily? Attach it to the side of a muffin pin cushion? Use it in a CQ block? Curious minds want to know.

Sherry has been playing around with her grape design and modified it to turn it into a very pretty lilac edging. The grape edging done in white is very dimensional, but the grape leaves tend to disappear into the background.

Doily, Bookmarks, Sun Hat and Motives

Sorry for the lack of recent posting. I had to get the Tatted Lace Pattern Collection newsletter done and out before I could spare the time to blog about the challenge. So here's a run through of the amazing laces that have been done since the last posting.

Wally had a slight designer's block but she's back to tatting now, and she only has 6 motives to go. To get things rolling she created this interesting design with interlocked rings. That was so much fun she did one with square rings. Cute and clever, Wally and the lace ;-)

Clyde finished the adaptation of the Distinctive Luncheon Set Pattern from the book Tatting Doilies& Edgings by Rita Weiss. The finished size is 17 inches across and Clyde has it sitting under a cranberry glass lamp. It's beautiful and I can imagine how wonderful it looks with a sparkling red lamp sitting on it. Gorgeous work.

Mark has re-worked the bobbin lace teardrop using some different techniques and written out the pattern for it. Nothing like stretching your abilities! Mark has also added 2 new how-to listings on his web page for pearl tatting and the zig-zag tatted chain. Great job, they are both clear and easy to follow.

Jon has been working on crocheting a tablecloth. So far it looks terrific. Some more vintage work has come to light while clearing out her MIL's house. There are several crocheted edgings and a partially completed doily. What do you do with bits and pieces especially when you don't have the original pattern or the right thread?

Sharon has the newsletter done and now we can see the pieces she was tatting put together as a whole. Here's a summer sun hat with a tatted band the the flowers we saw the other day.

Snowy had some thread left on the shuttle and she did these lovely little motives. They're so sweet they need to be made into something more.

Donna made her first felted object, a bag. Didn't it turn out wonderful?

EeKoon has been busy with her stitching and as a result several works in progress are now completed objects.

Azie has been stitching some projects in an exchange.

Marty has been playing with buttons, lots and lots of buttons. She has done button bookmarks and button motives and even decorated some T-shirts with tatted button motives. There are more than what's shown here so check out Marty's blog for all of the eye candy.

Melissa added her signature to the embroidered Floral Belle and did it in glow in the dark thread.

Sherry has created a special cobalt blue shuttle that she has named Diane. Too bad I don't use post shuttles, because I love the blue.

There are a lot of exceptionally talented people in this challenge and I think each of you has contributed to raise the bar even higher for the tatting community. Let's everyone keep up the good work!

Doilies, Stars and Necklaces

Would you believe this is post 175? That represents a lot of tatting.

Sharol is working on some motives to be used on her bag for the Tatted Treasures from Trash challenge. The red, white and blue thread on this Workbasket heart seemed like a good choice for the Memorial day weekend. The star she made is Sharol's own design.

Mark completed an exquisite Russian tape lace heart then did a pair of bobbin lace earrings "off the cuff" and finished up some thread from an earlier project making another original bobbinlace motif. Free time is great for getting things done.

After a long break Lori is back with a star for little Johnny.

Elizabeth took one of her flower designs and joined 3 of them together to form a pendant. Another modification to a Jan Stawasz doily pattern created a lovely necklace.

Sharon has posted another design that will be in her Tatted Lace Pattern Collection newsletter.

Azie shows us a lovely cross stitched pincushion.

Sylvia started a doily pattern from Mary Maynard's book intending to use part of it as a snood to cover her chignon. Her new hairdo doesn't allow for a chignon so now she'll finish the doily. She has also done a cross in a variegated thread and decided that she likes the effect.

Melissa is working on embroidering a lovely lady for Alece.

Sherry has turned her grape edging into a necklace.

Tatting and Etsy shops go together

Have you noticed how many of our participants have Etsy shops? It's a great way to get exposure for hand crafted items, since the buyers are looking for hand made goods and not mass produced merchandise.

Gail has been knitting and using mismatched dye lots to their best advantage. If she hadn't said anything I would have thought it was planned.

Clyde has more pictures of plant mosaics in his photo album.

Elizabeth has just finished a busy tax season and now that it's over she's had time to open an Etsy shop. See all the lovely items she has for sale.

Sharon has been tatting flowers, Gerbera daisies, sort of. If they were done in yellow they could be sunflowers. PDF Select, the name of the PDF indexing software is done and just needs a little tweaking of the help files. Sharon will let us know more about it as soon as it's ready.

Ooooo Have you seen what Marilee has been doing? Scrumptious hand dyed colours and she's added them to her Etsy shop.

Melissa tatted a fabulous crinoline lady for a friend to use on a crazy quilt. It's gorgeous now and will be spectacular with embellishments. Melissa has also done a short movie showing how she makes a split ring. A wonderful way to show others how to tat. Melissa has an Etsy shop where she sells CQ fabrics and trims.

Sherry has been having an interesting time in her shop. In the midst of shaking up some glaze for a pot, it exploded - the glaze not the pot. There are some more mugs with tatting designs on them added to her Etsy shop and in her "spare" time Sherry created this cluny bookmark to be used in the online class.

Celtic Doily and Grape Edging

I spent yesterday having an assessment done and I'm still hurting from it. It didn't seem all that bad at the time, but my leg has been bothering me ever since. OUCH! There haven't been a lot of posts since the last update so I figure I can just manage this and then I'm back to bed.

By the way, have you checked out the Tatting Treasures from Trash Blog? There are quite a few people signed up for it and lots of ideas percolating although so far most of the pictures are pairs of less than elegant jeans about to be put out of thei misery. Anyone can join in the fun and making a bag out of an old pair of jeans is quick and easy. Gina has even posted a movie showing you how it's done in only 3 minutes! If you'd like to join, send me your e-mail address so that you can start posting.

Mark has posted pictures of the AQS Paducah Quilt show. Lots of eye candy. There's a glitch in Yahoo but clicking on the empty blocks will take you to the pictures.

Azie has posted pictures of some cross stitched pendibules done for an exchange. I had to look up "pendibule" as I had no idea what it was. It's a triangular stuffed ornament made by decorating a square of fabric, folding it in half diagonally and stuffing it, then joining the points of the long side together and attaching a ribbon to hang it.

Martha has tatted this lovely Sugar and Spice Doily by Tina Neudorf from her book "Needle Tatting from the Heart" using size 30 Omega thread.
Sherry shows us a picture of her tatted grape edging with all 5 shuttles still attached. There are designs that use more shuttles, but 5 is still quite enough. Sherry has been given one of her great grandmother's shuttles. This one is an Aero bobbin shuttle which she doesn't really like, but she'll use it because it was her great grandmother's.