Hi! Hello! Yoo Whoo!

Can't believe that I went for almost four months without blogging!

So, what did I do during my absence? Actually, I did not totally disappear. I updated my Facebook page a few times ....

Here are a few photos about tatting,

Almost there with the doily from the tatted of lace blog which I started in Dec 2015.

Decided to tat something for a few friends and made a bookmark end,

and ended up with four pieces.

Taught tatting at Spotlight to eager students. They were really good at it and caught the flip very quickly 

On a more personal note, I made another pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah in late November 2015.

A panoramic view of the courtyard Masjid Nabawi in Madinah.  What appear like giant mushrooms are actual huge umbrellas that open up to shade the pilgrims during the day. This photo was taken early in the morning; that tiny white dot in the upper right is the full moon.

A 180 deg view of the inside of  Masjidil Haram in Makkah

To Change or not to Change

This 

started as a re-work of this,

but, as it often happens, the mind wonders.

I have some issues with the (lower) pink doily, so I decided to re-work it. It is difficult to try and stick to the original design plan and it turned into the upper design.  I may decide to come back to the pink at some point.

Other tatting updates.
I have finished the Spring 2015 doily.

Size 40 milford in two shades, 16 inches wide.

Tatted a bookmark for a friend who wants to start tatting again,

Pattern by Robin Perfetti from the blog Tating by the Bay

I sewed a few fabrc bookmarks as part of a Crafting for Charity event by the Arts & Craft Guild, KL and Selangor. These were later finished with button embellishments but I forgot to take any photo with the buttons on.

I think this about sums up what I have been doing the past few months.

p.s. the title of the blog refers to the re-working of the pink doily.

p.p.s Oh, my birthday was at the end of August and I treated myself to these goodies.

Spring, Summer and now Autumn is coming

and I have not fnished my Renulek's Spring 2015 Doily. Here is a report of my progress so far.

After having issues with the small flowers, as in the last post, I snipped off that round and started over and the result is much better. Rounds 6 and 7 went smoothly.

And just when I thought Round 8 was going to be a breeze .....

Opened up the group of rings and chains and re-tatted - took me two days, in between doing other things. Now, this is what I learned from this episode.
If your first thought was to snip the mistake off, do it immediately. Don't even think about opening the stitches because if you do, you will have to do them all. Once you start un-doing even one ring, you'll keep telling yourself "I'll do one more", and by the time you decided that cutting off is the better option, there will be only a couple more left to do. By then you'll be thinking, might as well do them all! Have you had that feeling before?

Anyway, here is it is after Round 9, which was without any mistakes, Yippeee!

This doily will definitely need blocking when done. Notice how the rings in Round 8 have a slant in them.

Now, I tried something slightly different for Round 10, which you can see here,

I decided to alternate the curve of the chains between the rings. Not sure of the end result but I think it will turn out okay.

and next, the happy-dance news.

Remember this post about my yard sale find? When I was at the yard sale, the homeowner mentioned that she came across a few shuttles while sorting out her late mother's things but can't find them. She promised to call me when she comes across them again. I was not placing mcuh hope that she'd remember.

True to her words, she called me last week to tell me that the shuttles are found and would I like to come and pick them up? Would I? Would I? That needs no answer. 

I picked up them up the next day and was grinning ear-to-ear when I saw the shuttles. Wouldn't you too, when you see these?

Now I have three of them.  The first was my mother-in-law's that surfaced during packing when she had to move house. Growing up, I learned tatting using this type of shuttles but that was more than 40 yearas ago and have lost them somewhere.

It was a long break .....

... from blogging.

We have just concluded our fasting during the month of Ramadhan.  I was keeping low from any blogging activities during that period but managed to do some tatting.  Her are some of what I have finished or in the progress of tatting.

The doily in from the Needlework magazine was blocked and slightly pressed,

I resumed tatting Renulek's 2015 Spring Doily. I stopped at round 5, where the small individual flowers are.  I was very unhappy with how the flowers are turning out, stopped and worked on the doily above.

This photo shows clearly what I am having probems with.  The flowers were twisting all over and looks horrible.  I made a few and joined the next round to it, but it did not get any better,

  

So, I snipped that part off and started on the small flowers again. This time, I added tiny picots after two double stitches and join the rings together.  They stayed flat this way and I am much happier. You can compare it to the twisted flower in this photo (below).

 

I am now at Round 7 and I just want to finish this as soon as possible so that I can begin on this doily from Land of Laces blog.  Please follow the link to view it.  I am not posting the photo here because it is not my photo to share.

Yard Sale Find

Went to my first ever yardsale about a month back which happened to be selling craft-related items. I was lucky enough to find a few tatting patterns from a couple of old magazines and books.

 These two are the Coats tatting booklets (from 1971 and 1977) with patterns for edgings, motifs and doilies. a collar and cuffs, and coaster sets.  The motifs are pretty on its own but makes prettier doilies/mats when joined up together.

A McCall's Needlework magazine from 1954 gave me these patterns - an insertion, an edging and a doily. The doily was calling out to and it took no time for me to start work on it. 

Three weeks later, the doily is done. Here it is being blocked.  I have not cut off the thread ends which I will do after blocking. Thread used is size 20 Milford in two shades.  The doily measured about 26cm

From Stitch 'n Sew (1973), I found two patterns - Pillow for Wedding-Ring-Bearer and a Book cover. Both look like shuttle-only patterns.

The other exciting thing for me is that the article in the Stitch 'n Sew magazine was written by Myrtle Hamilton.  I have heard of her being mentioned in several tatting sites such as one by Georgia Seitzs but have never actually seen or read anything by her.  Reading what is found from the internet, Myrtle Hamilton contributed much to tatting, and this sort of made me touch-base with her, in my own way.

From yet another magazine, Needlework Illustrated of unknown date because it has lost its cover, I found this embroidery instructions for the Willow Pattern.

I have no plans to embroider it but it is kind of interesting because Pam Palmer has translated it into tatting patterns in her book Tatting Treats Three, which I also have.  Having these two with me sort of completes everything.

All in, it was a great find at the one and only yard sale that I have been to. I doubt if there will be another opportunity like this again.

A ha! It is all about the joins

I have had this little daisy motif in my to-do list from I-don't-know-when and only now got around to attempting it.

This is my first attempt.  I had no trouble with tatting the rounds and rounds of chains but, as you can see, I struggled to get a good-looking shape for the loops over it.

My first two attempts came out horribly misshapen.  Put it down and had lunch.  Picked it up later in the day and it dawn on me where I was doing wrong.

It is in the joins!

Working with chains, naturally the first thought of joins would be the lock join.  That was what I did for the first two attempts. Using lock join forms kinks in the chains whereas I wanted a continuous curve in it.  That can be achieved by making use of the regular join, i.e. by pulling the ball thread through the picot of the centre ring. I also used the regular join for the outer part to achieve a smooth flow of the chains, moving on to the next part of the daisy.

Having decided on the methods that I wanted to use, This is my second attempt. There are some issues with the tension though because the size of the loops are not even but I am happy with it..

Thread is Altin Basak 3053

The Tatted Wheel

The tatted wheel is one of a number of basic tatting motifs, tatted with shuttle only. This motif is common in the early tatting books/booklets.  It can be with a small ring in the centre or without. What I can say is that it is not as simple as it says in the pattern.  This post is about tatting that wheel with a ring in the centre. This is a sample that I tatted recently,

Now, I don't know about other tatters, but there are a number of things here that is a pain to me.

First, I dislike tatting motifs with bare thread spaces. I never can guess how much of the bare thread to leave before starting the next ring. Then, there is that small ring in the centre. I always fail in trying to figure out what size picots to make for that small ring in the centre.

Note:
That small ring sometimes also make an appearance in patterns with rings and chains, as seen here;

Most early patterns would ask you to tat that small ring, cut the thread and tie into a knot to complete the number of picots required.  Then you tat the outer round and join to that small ring as you go.

While I have not really found a fail-proof solution for estimating the bare thread space, there are now ways of making that small ring in one go as you tat the outer element.  Here are two methods that I have used to get out of having to cut-and-tie for that small ring.

First, if there are chains joined to that small ring (as in the red motif), I will work the pattern with two shuttles. I start the pattern with the outer round that will be joined to that small ring. I tat the chain as in the pattern but stop at the point where the patterns says to join to the small ring.  Here, I take the other shuttle and make a thrown ring off the chain following the pattern for that small ring. I make sure that I leave a mock picot space at the start of the ring, and make the other picots in it about the same size as the mock picot space.  Close the ring and continue as per the pattern.  The next chain will then be joined to the picot of that small ring.  No more cut-and-tie.

For a ring attached to a ring as in the firt picture, it is not quite as straightforward. Thankfully, there are are wonderfully clever tatters who have come out with a method of avoiding the cut-and-tie for this case. There is now a technique of making a ring on a ring with shuttle only, also referred to as loop-tatted ring.  With this technique, I was able to do this,

and this,

Here are links to tutorial for this techniques available online,
Karen Cabrera's video and Jane Eborall's tutorial in printable form.

However, I ended my loop-tatted ring in a slightly different way from the ways shown in the video and in Jane's instructions.  In both, the shuttle is passed through the final loop and the end result is the thrown ring touches the ring that it is 'sitting' on.  (I hope this makes sense).  In the case of the small centre ring, I need to leave some space to make up the number of picots in that ring.

If you observe the photo above, you'll notice that I have left a small bare thread space before starting the loop-tatted ring (with picots). This bare thread space will complete the number of picots needed in that small ring in the centre.

I anchored the core thread of the loop-tatted ring by bringing the core thread over the loop-tatted ring, as you would close a single-shuttle split ring.When the loop-tatted ring is closed, I leave another small bare thread space before tatting the next doublestitch. This second bare thread space completes the mock picot.

No more flimsy small rings to cut-and-tie and ends to hide.