Fall

One of my favorite things about living in Pennsylvania is fall.  Cooler temperatures, beautiful leaves, Steeler's football, apples, cider, pumpkins, mums - I just love the season.  So when September comes around, I pull out all my orange and other fall-friendly threads and my tatting takes on a distinctly fall flavor.

This is Rosemarie Peel's small Celtic motif from "Tatting for Pleasure." I love this design - especially with beads.  I've been wearing this one myself to celebrate fall's arrival.

Next - my pumpkin earrings, slightly updated this year based on the fact I've discovered some different findings and decided I liked the tatted pearl better turned upside-down. (There really isn't a right way up I just had decided in my own head which side was the top and now I've changed my mind - at least for the pumpkins.) :-)

 

I've also been playing with Yarnplayer's new "Small Maple Leaf" pattern.  Love, love, LOVE this clever little pattern!  The pattern is written so well, it works up relatively quickly, and it looks just like a maple leaf.  Yarnplayer is a very talented designer.

That's all the tatting for this past week - I've been studying for the first section of the CPA exam which I will be taking this coming Saturday.  Say a prayer for me!

Blessings,

Bead Embroidery

For the last six months or so I've been playing around with what I'll call "bead embroidery."  It involves sewing beads onto the tatting after the tatted piece has already been made.  Sometimes the tatted pieces already have some beads incorporated in them (as I was tatting them the beads were added) and I'm just embellishing the piece with more beads, and sometimes I just take a plain tatted piece and sew all of beads directly onto it. 

 

It's mostly pins I make this way since they already have some kind of a filigree on the back in order to hide and attach the pin.  You'll see below one pair of earrings I made this way as well.

 

I enjoy the process - not as much as the tatting itself, of course - but it is a lot more fun than making the little roses I used for many years to decorate these miniature little doilies.  I've pretty much discontinued that line of my jewelry (although I still use the cameos for a little more of a Victorian flair) and was trying to figure out how I could decorate and keep brooches as part of my inventory.

  

 

I've certainly got plenty of beads and had quite a few piece of plain, undecorated tatting I had originally planned on decorating with the roses, so I started experimenting and my bead embroidery was born.  Right now I'm still in the developmental stages; I have a few techniques and designs I like to use often but I'm always working on coming up with something different.