Doilies, Motifs, Bracelet, Earrings, Coaster, Butterfly and Techniques

Mistene ordered some luscious HDT from Yarnplayer and started the Heart Doily from Land of Laces with some of the Summer Trail thread.

Jane is working on Motif 36 using size 40 thread, just because it came to hand first when she was looking for thread and she's thinking she should use this size thread more often. She finished motif 36 shortening the inner chains, hoping that she got the correct amount of stitches so that the motif lies flat. Teiko Fujito's book says to use her outer thread joining method for the dense rosette in the centre but pulling the shuttle thread too tight on this design resulted in a mess. She reverted to shuttle joins, but to avoid bright pink colour blips on them, she tatted just one round with pink and then used the pastel variegated thread on shuttle and ball which worked perfectly. Jane started the individual flower motifs with a reef knot to join the 2 colours and then sewed the ends in for a neater finish. That's a lot of little ends to hide. The final result is a very pretty little motif 38.

Nikki found that the last 2 rows on her doily have gone pretty well as they are just rings and chains and the repetitiveness of doing a doily seems to be a bit calming so that is a very good thing.

Elsa isn't a fan of lace and beads, but this design for a Russian bracelet by Tatyana Buyvolova changed her mind.

Sue has another round completed on the enormous doily she has been tatting. She also made another earwig worked in an Altin Basak 50 from the Ring of Tatters beading book and DVD.

Diane finished test tatting Robin Perfetti's Victorian Doily from her soon-to-be-published book of coasters in size 20 Lizbeth, Wedgewood Dk. It's 4 3/4" across, just the right size for a coaster. She worked a little more on her newest Spinning Wheel glass mat using size 20 Helm's Deep HDT from Sherry, LadyShuttleMaker. She started blogging 9 years ago on Sherry's recommendation and it's only fitting that on her anniversary she's working with one of Sherry's hand dyed threads. Here's the finished Spinning Wheel in Helm's Deep HDT by Sherry. Her next Spinning Wheel is already started using size 20 Pond, hand-dyed thread from Yarnplayer.

Eliz is working a little on all of her "works in progress", using WIP Wednesday to help her keep on track. The Renulek tat-along doily is just over 20 cm in diameter at the end of round 8 in size 80 thread. The tea cloth test tat she's doing for Jessica is at round 3 approximately 12 cm in diameter so far in size 40. The Concentric Rectangles doily has just two more rounds to go and it's 15 cm by 22.5 cm thus far in size 20.

Fox is finding that the Concentric Rectangles doily that she's tatting with some of Lea's HDT size 50 is not difficult, but it requires a lot of concentration and unbroken focus. It's coming along and pictured now with a matching shuttle.

Lilas has created a special selection of tatted bridal pieces including combs bracelets and hair ornaments.

Marie likes this rosy butterfly done with 3 strands of sewing thread much better. She had fun tatting around this doo dad and she left the threads hanging while she decided what she wanted to do to finish it off. She's test tatting a coaster pattern for "Tatting by the Bay". She decided to add her recently tatted doo dad to her new tatting/lucet case.

Muskaan has completed round 11 of Renulek's tatalong doily which now measures 11½” in size 40 Anchor Mercer 4054-0300. Her work on the doily led to experimenting with when to "post" the shuttle and fortunately for us, she recorded her results. See her detailed description for further enlightenment.

HisKid has finally finished round 11 on the Spring doily although it's still ruffling around the edges.

Motifs, Doilies, Coaster, Bracelet and Butterfly

Jane continues to work through the Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito and although Motif 33 is done in one colour in the book, she decided to use colour to emphasize the flowers, using Milford size 20 thread for the design. She replaced the normal chains with lock chains in Motif 34, but the chains were too long. She snipped the chains out securing the ends and re-did it with the colours in reverse and smaller chains. This motif makes her think of tulips and has an odd construction where the outer round isn't joined all the way around and she didn't think she'd need to shorted in inner chains. Fortunately she realized there was a problem before she got too far.

Sharon is tatting Renulek's 2014 Spring doily in size 40 Anchor Mercer thread with plans to enter it in the county fair, but after tatting a while in the car she realized she was joining the front side chains to the back side of the doily and had to cut off the offending bit.

Nikki has decided to start the same doily again, this time using colour and she already has the first rounds done. Looking good!

Melanie notes that this is the first time she's tatted a pattern starting at the edge and going towards the center with each round and she was nervous that the edges might begin to curl or ruffle, but they didn't.

Diane started her next Spinning Wheel Glass Mat in HDT size 20 Helm's Deep from LadyShuttleMaker. She has started test tatting Robin Perfetti's Victorian Coaster and is looking forward to more of Robin's designs.

Marie loves the nice chains the lucet produces and mixed up this bracelet with some tatting. She wanted to try a Morfo Butterfly in Anchors, pearl cotton #12 but it doesn't have the same crisp feel of 3 strands of sewing thread.

Wanda tatted a little bit of red, white and blue for flag day.

Doilies, Motifs, Heart, Choker, Flag, Crosses, Bookmarks, Butterfly, Earrings, Necklace and Snowflake

Mistene has round 8 of Renulek's Spring 2016 Doily done, although it's curling a bit. After round 9 it's still curling and she's hoping another round with sort it out.

Jane was approaching the end of the round when she hit the end of her thread. We all hate running out of thread but never more than when we're so close to the finish line. Here's the finished motif. She didn't like where the final round of this square motif started, thinking it would change the tension on the chain, so she changed to where she thought it ought to start, which is an easy thing to do for an experienced tatter. Motif 31 in the Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito has the same centre as motif 28 which gave her trouble, so she was able to use the lessons learned there to tat this one correctly. She thinks think she could've done motif 32 in one pass if she'd been a bit more forward-thinking.

Sharon has Round 8 of the Renulek spring 2016 doily completed and she's still 2 rounds behind.

Nikki tatted this little heart pattern by Vicki Clarke in Artiste thread in Windsor colour, but she got half way around, and discovered she had attached in the wrong place and abandoned it. The second one came out beautifully, but she's not sure what she's going to do with it. She's been looking for a choker pattern and auditioned this bookmark design by Dee Powell in Bernat Handicrafter thread in iris, but the little hearts got lost in the colour changes. She did it again in Cameo crochet thread, but she doesn't like the texture of the thread and made one too many hearts, so she's going to try it again in black Lizbeth. She went back to Renulek's Spring 2014 napkin done with #10 Artiste thread in the colour of snow pea, which she is going to call finished at row 8 because there was an earlier mistake she decided not to fix which makes progress difficult and in addition, it's already 17 inches across.

Melanie has another stripe done and she's on to the very long stripes. Lots of long, slow slogging on this project.

Cindy has been tatting bookmarks to keep on hand to pop into a card for people she knows will appreciate them.

Diane finished the first arm of this Spinning Wheel. A cutie pie in a onesie is even cuter with a tatted teddy bear. More tatting time has this Spinning Wheel progressing nicely. Of course not much tatting time results in not much progress. Still progressing. Spinning Wheel glass mat, Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior in size 20 hand-dyed thread, Raspberry Ripple with Real Vanilla by Tatskool.

Eliz chose size 40 DMC Cordonnet in white to work on an adaptation of a 1915 tea cloth pattern which has been done by Jessica Spaulding.

Fox is making slow progress on the lace around this fabric centre, but it sure is pretty. This is a Norma Benporath pattern, that she found fun, easy and new to her, tatted directly onto a round doily centre. The more the unfinished lace sat there, the more Fox decided to call this one done and she cut off the unfinished row on this Renulek doily.

Laurette tatted a variation of Fiona's variation on Anne Bruvold's Tardis bookmark making it one row longer as a Father's Day gift for her Dad.

Margaret used Lizbeth Juicy Watermelon thread size 20 to tat this Spinning Wheel Glass Mat by Mary Konior.

Marie tatted this little "Mary's Butterfly," with three strands of sewing thread and left the ends, to add beads. After adding beads, it doesn't look like a butterfly.  Here is a pair of cross earrings, she designed to go with a cross necklace.

Muskaan tatted The Tenth Day of December Snowflake by Lene Björn from 24 Snowflakes in Tatting, but she wanted to highlight the curves of the long chains in a single colour. She has been test tatting Jane Eboarll's Beaded Lock Chain Earrings, which are a challenge for her because beads seem to drive her crazy. She gave filet tatting as shared by Amanda a try. She used what she called the “SLT picot” to change colour midway through a chain. She's tatting Rounds 9 & 10 of Renulek's  2016 doily in size 40 cream Anchor thread.

Phyllis has completed the Diane Doily found on Craftree, which just needs the ends worked in and pressing so that she can use it for her fair entry this year.

Sue spent 90 minutes waiting for a friend at the clinic which gave her lots of tatting time on the Spring 2016 doily. Lack of energy kept her from zooming right along, but she is making progress.

Wanda had this fabric doily centre and used Lizbeth size 20 in #159 Easter Eggs to add the edging as she went and it fit perfectly without any adjustment.