Joining Long Picots, Butterfly Bookmark

Recently, there have been discussions in the Facebook Tatting Group asking how to join long picots to each other .  I remembered I had done this years ago with the bookmark pictured above.

I used Ball Thread Joins to attach to picots tip to tip so they wouldn't overlap.  Pretty cool, huh?  In fact, I did this so long ago, that I thought I had invented the ball thread join, silly me.

I thought I had given this pattern to Georgia for the Online Class at the time, but maybe I never got around to it since I can't find it in the old lesson index.

I've added the pattern to the Free Pattern Page of this blog, see the link at the top of the page. (Note to self, the new website is way behind schedule, get back to work.)

The butterflies are based on a pattern from Butterick's Tatting and Netting from 1896.  Free downloads are available from Georgia's Archive of Tatting Books in the Public Domain (scroll down about halfway), and from the Antique Pattern Library's Tatting list (scroll almost to the bottom of the page).  I think it was also reprinted by Lacis under a different title, but I can't verify that right now.

Update: I originally did not have the pattern file properly set to share publicly, sorry.  It should work now.

Butterflies -- Motifs 11 - 13

Do you ever have a little tatting voice inside your head? Do you ever have a slump where you don't feel like tatting, or maybe you feel like it, but can't pick anything to make? A while back I was in a slump, and as I would sort through my balls of thread hoping for inspiration for the next project, the little voice would say, "I don't want these, I want to tat with some different colors." Which was odd, because, believe me, I have lots of colors. Eventually, I figured it out, I needed HDT. Or in this case, hand-painted thread as Karey calls hers. I pulled out a skein of her "County Fair" thread and a much admired book from the shelf and was back in business.

All of these butterflies are from Tatted Butterflies by Adelheid Dangela. There are quite a lot of good designs in this book. The patterns are all in diagram form, so maybe too hard for a new beginner, but highly recommended for anyone with a little experience, enough to look at the picture and know when to reverse work or switch shuttles.

Buggy Lanyard

I had these buttons I wanted to do something with, though none of my ideas had been working out. Then TattingChic started her dicussion of the Single Shuttle Split Ring and its use for climbing out. Oooh, just what I needed! and a lanyard was born.

(Now, who knows why I need a lanyard with bugs on it? How many of you are making a buggy lanyard too?)

Now another discussion has started in TattingLand about adding joins to the SSSR. I can't wait to see where that will lead.

I suppose I could call this an "Excercise Your Stash" project, since otherwise those buttons would have languished in the drawer forever.

Almost the End of My Designing Career

I was sorting and discarding stuff in preparation for moving and I came across this old rejection letter from Workbasket:

I remember thinking, "If they were overstocked on tatting patterns, there wasn't much use in trying, was there?" I quit working on refining this heart:



Yeah, right, I know now that a heart built around 3 circles isn't exactly a new frontier. It's been done, but remember way back then, I was tatting in a vacuum. I had a couple of books borrowed from the library, a fairly new subscription to Workbasket, and whatever Dover books were at the local Borders.

I also quit working on a large centerpiece I had been designing. It had (or rather was going to have) a border of butterfly motifs all around it. Later I learned that had already been done too. That UFO is in a box somewhere--I come across it once every few years while looking for something else.

I didn't quit tatting altogether, though for a while I didn't do much more than produce some doilies or edged pillowcases for Christmas presents.

P.S. Needlecraft for Today didn't want it either:



P.P.S. It wasn't such a great butterfly, so I can see why they didn't want it :)