Jan Stawasz's Motif

Took a break from the square and tatted this from Jan Stawasz's book Tatted Treasures.  It is the motif of the table runner on pages 65 of the book.

I tried my best to follow his instruction on making the picot within a double stitch, i.e placing the picot between the first half and the second half of the double stitch.  It was not easy getting used to it, sometime I got it, other times I slipped back into the usual method. Unpicked a number of times because of it.

I do find a bit f a problem following the chart for this motif because the numbering of the stitch count jumps all over the chart.  I find that I have to read a different part of the chart for the middle group of rings and for the chains because the were not numbered in the working sequence in the chart like I am used to. 

Still, I am quite happy with this one.  I will be adding more to it as a way of taking a break from the square mat that I showed previously.  Here is a photo of it with a second square added.

These two squares used up almost one ball of the DMC size 80.  I only have one more ball of the thread so this will be a four-squares mat with maybe just enough for a thin border around it.

Tatting With Size 80

One ball of size 80, DMC in particular, fills up just under four shuttles.

How do I know?

I have been working with size 80 thread this past week.  I have not worked with anything smaller than 40 but for this current project I will be needing more than one ball and the only ones that I have is the size 80.  I have forgotten how it felt tatting with fine thread and now I understand why some tatters keep picking up these fine sizes to work with.

I have finished one motif of the project and it used up almost half a ball of the size 80.  The way it is going I did the right thing to pick that thread because I am going to need at least two balls for it.

This is what I managed to finish with two full shuttles of size 80, one square and a little bit more of the second square motif.  The complete square is 4.5in wide (11.5cm).

I like to join similar motifs together to see if there are any underlying design the pops up, and I think this is one of those time that it may turn out quite well. If you have been to my facebook page Tat-a-Renda, you would have seen a representation of it.  Here it is again, for those who are not on Facebook.

Winning and Winners ... among other things

'Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim readers

Selamat Hari Raya  

Last Sunday was 'Eid-ul-Fitr, the day to mark the end of one month of fasting for Muslims around the world.    During the fasting month of Ramadhan, it was about devotion to Allah SWT, of refrain from all things bad and negative, and about exercising moderation in most other things.  With 'Eid-ul-Fitr, it is about coming together and strengthening family relationships, mending broken ties and making new bonds and holding to new hopes.  It is also about winning the fight against temptation and greed and all things evil within ourselves. It is our hope that what was learned and practised during Ramadhan will continue and take us through the following months until the next Ramadhan comes by again, InsyaAllah.

Final result of the Giveaway

Next, the matter of the giveaway winners is finalised.  As in the previous post, the two names picked in my giveaway draw were God's Kid and Sandy C.  But, only one will get the oval doily.  I flipped a coin to decide who from these two will get it.  Just to be fair, I flipped it five times and in four out of the five, God's Kid's name came out top.
I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Oval Doily is God's Kid.

Update on the NB doily.  

This is where I am currently at.

As you can see, I have finished the current round and blocked it, even though the full doily is not yet finished.  When working on a large piece, I usually block the work mid-way through the  rounds to smoothen out the piece and prepare it for the next round. I find this useful because I will be able to gauge the kind of tension that I need to apply when tatting the next round.

While working on that last round of the doily, I got an inspiration for a new design working with some sections of the design from the doily. This first one was inspired by that part of the doily with the thrown ring in it where  I added a corner to turn it into a square.

 Expanding it slightly by adding a small clover leaf in the middle, I got a bigger square,

I have yet to figure out the shape of tatting to fill in the centre of this square.  This was tatted in size 20 (as I usually do when working on a new design) and the finished size is about 3.5in wide.  Using a smaller thread like a size 40 will give a smaller finish .. hmm ..  one of Fox's doodads will work very well in the centre, I think.

New Medallions in Tatting - NB pattern No. 3

This is my third venture with Norma Benporath patterns that were published in the Queenslander newspaper.

Before I go to the patterns, for the benefit of those who may have missed my earlier posts, I have embarked on tatting patterns by Norma Benporath as published in the Queenslander newspaper.  These articles and patterns were scanned and made available online in the Trove website. The text for the patterns were captured by OCR (optical character readers) and given in the sidebar of the page.  Readers are invited to go through the text and make corrections if they come across any mistakes when captured by the OCR. A number of tatters in InTatters  have undertaken to go through the digitised text to verify the pattern text.  I have decided to go a step further and actually tat the patterns based on the digitised text and see if they tatted up as they should be.

My third pattern is from New Medallions in Tatting, published on January 31st, 1935.  There are three patterns in this article; two square medallions and one with an 'unusual shape' (that's the description as in the paper).  Here I have finished one square and partially completed the other. I will not continue with the bigger square because I made a mistake  in one of the chains.

Talking of mistakes, I needed to correct the stitch count in the text of both squares and corrected the text in the website as well. One mistake was caused by the OCR capture.  Another was the resulting non-symmetry in the design if I had tatted according the published instruction.  There was another mistake in the bigger square where the clovers should be joined to the square because, following the published pattern, it did not look like the scanned photo as shown in the newspaper.

In the course of tatting NB's patterns I noticed a common feature in several of the patterns, and that is the stand-alone clovers.  I call them stand-alone clovers because they are tatted individually and not joined to the rest of the tatting by any chains, but rather only at the picots.    In these two squares, the clovers shape the corners of the square.  This feature was also found in a doily that I tatted earlier (scroll down to the end of the page to see the doily).

Square motif mat finished

The mat made up of square motifs that started with the design that I first wrote about over two months ago is finally finished.

The finished size is 22cm x 18cm (8.5in x 7in) and uses up about one ball of Milford in size 40.  There is still some thread left on the ball but not sufficient to finish another row of motifs.

I decided to make a slight change to the design and in the way the motifs are joined together.  I completed a sample of four squares and then made copies of the image to create a bigger one,

I think the second design looks too dense to my liking.  There is no clear line in the layout that draws the eyes to, as compared to the seemingly interlocking squares of the first design.  It does look slightly better in two colours if going by this rough drawing.

Till the next episode .....

Square Block

This design is one of my earlier ones that finally got round to be written and diagrammed. It is a square motif that I made as one of the entries in my 25-motif challenge.

I have since completed my challenge but I encourage you to visit the challenge blog and see the work of others tatters who are still participating in the challenge. And if you have not done so, you may be tempted to join up.


The picture above is showing four of the square blocks joined together to make a bigger square.

Pattern uses two shuttles

The chart

The written instructions

R(3-3-3-3) , reverse work (rw).
C(4-6), do not reverse (dnr).

(*)Switch Shuttle (SS), R(4-4-4), rw. C(6), dnr.

SS, R(3-3+3-30, join to the middle picot of first ring, dnr
R(3-3-3-3), dnr.

SS, C(6), rw. R(4+4-4), join to the adjacent ring at the second picot, dnr.

SS, C(6-4), rw. R(3-3+3-3), join to the middle picot of the opposite ring, dnr.

SS, C(4-2), dnr.

SS, R(2+4-3-3), join to the picot of previous chain, dnr.
R(3+4-4-3), join to last picot of previous ring, dnr.
R(3+3-4-2), join to last picot of previous ring., dnr.

SS, C(2+4), join to last picot of previous ring, dnr.

SS, R(3-3-3-3), rw. C(4+6) join to picot of opposite chain, dnr.

Repeat from (*) to complete the motif, replacing the first picot with a join to picot of the adjacent ring.

Square Motif

This design is made up of four small squares joined up together.

The chart for each small square is given below.