A Tale of Two Doilies

Doily No. 1

I have always wanted to tat the pattern Mat #34 from the DMC Book of Charted Tatting Designs ever since I saw Tattycat's version of it so many years ago.  You can see it here and here. I couldn't at that time because I don't have the book.

I finally got me the book last year but did not tat it right away because of other on-going projects.  Finally managed to start on it a few weeks ago. As it was, I picked a HDT and soon enough ran out of thread as I had blogged earlier.  I picked a yellow/lemon solid colour to continue and here it is at Round 6 of 7 rounds.
I think it is going along great with the yellow, even though not as colourful as Tattycat's.

Doily No. 2

I was attracted to Norma Benporath's(NB) pattern that were published in the Trove, firstly by the beautiful designs, and secondly for the challenge of deciphering patterns written in the old style.  I have attempted a few of the patterns, and came out tops here and not so here.  If you want to view all blog entries on my attempts of Norma Banporath's pattern, click on her name on the tags section on right side of the blog.

And here is the latest attempt.  As you can see, I have chosen to use the gold coloured thread for this round, and after reading all your comments, I plan to use the pink as well later. However, I may have to cut this latest round off and start again.  And, the yellow lines?  I will explain.
A characteristic of NB's designs, as observed from the patterns on the Trove, is the use of stand-alone 3-rings or 4-rings clusters as used here.  Each set of 4-rings is tatted individually, so imagine the number of ends to hide just for this round, 12 pairs to exact.  I chose to utilise the splits rings again for this round which I think will work nicely.

Now, these rings are really big, from 33ds in the smallest ring to 54ds in the biggest, with picots every 3ds.  That is too much to handle, so I decided to tat without picots except for the joining picots.  It is hard enough to close large rings, let alone trying to keep all the picots in shape.

The reasons for cutting them off ..

  • When I counted the ds to determine the position of the joining picots, I miscounted the number in one of the rings (marked A).  Notice the odd shape compared to B?
  • Continuing with the same ds count, I have the feeling that this row will ruffle and not stay flat.  You can see  from the yellow lines that the outermost rings (on left and right) have exceeded the span of what it should be.  I will be reducing the ds count in this row, hoping that it will not affect the next row. Will see about that when I get there.

... to be continued

Comments

  1. Both doilies are beautiful . Look forward to seeing how they work up
    Margaret

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  2. both doilies look very good. I am sure they will be wonderful when finished.
    the technique you are using to check the round on the NB doily is very interesting. Will have to keep that in mind in the future.
    Thanks for showing your methods.

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  3. Doily number 1 is outstandingly gorgeous! I love the soft colors you've used.

    I like doily number two as well although I can't imagine the pain in the neck of those gigantic rings, I'm sure I'd never get them closed. I like the contrast of the very plain rings in this round with the frills ness of the earlier ones. His will be lovely too!

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  4. I'm amazed at the number of knots in those rings(!), and split rings at least eliminate the tying and cutting. I like the way you determined the knot counts have to be adjusted. Hope that works out!

    I'm curious about the software you used to write on the photo. I still don't know how to do that!

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    Replies
    1. I imported the photo into a drawing software and draw the lines using the function in the software. I then save the new image.
      I used Serif Draw but I think any drawing software can be used to do it.

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  5. Keeping you busy, I look forward to seeing the final results.

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