Edging and Insertion - 26 Oct 1938

Another beautiful edging pattern and insertions from Norma Benporath can be found on this page of the Trove site.

I have only tatted the edging and the diamond-shaped insertion.  The design for the star insertion is rather common today and several designers have come out with something close to it, so I have not tatted it. However, it is the edging and the diamond insertion that I find interesting.

First, the edging - now this is one design where using a modern technique really saves a lot of trouble.
Miss Benporath's pattern for the edging starts by tatting the large rings that forms the centre of the scallop. These rings are made separately on its own and saved until required.  You can imagine how many of these rings will need to be made one by one if the edging is a long one.

This is where mock rings came in handy.  The picture below explains how I did it.

I started with a mock ring instead of a regular ring as in the pattern. Half-way through the mock ring, I used the second shuttle to make the large ring.  I then finished the mock ring and close it to complete the first ring. The rest of the tatting then follows as per the pattern until the next repeat, where again, the first ring of the repeat is a mock ring.

If you plan to tat this edging, please note that the stitch count for the large ring in the middle of the scallop was missing from the original article, probably through poor editing.  So I guesstimated the size by looking at the print photo.  It seemed to work.  Here is the stitch count, following the mock ring method that I used,
R(5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3)

The second piece from this article is the diamond insertion.

This is an easy pattern made up of two rounds not counting the small ring in the centre.  Again, this can easily be tatted in one pass with the use of split rings and split chains.  Nothing interesting here, except that I had this sudden thought - can the diamond motif be used to make a doily?

I have not actually tatted it, but after copying and pasting the image a few times, I think it will make a rather lovely piece of doily.

What do you think?
I forgot to mention this earlier - the length of the diamond motif is about 14cm or 5.5cm using size 20 thread.  This would make quite a sizable doily.