Motif Twenty-One

As promised, here is the butterfly from Rozella Linden's book, "Tatted Butterfly Garden." I had a very difficult time with the body. I did get it to work correctly - I think - but it came out a little too small for these wings. The head doesn't lay flat either and that bothers me.

I am very pleased with the wings themselves, though. I love the pattern - very realistic. The book suggested planning out the wings when using a variegated thread so that they would be mirror images of each other not only in the pattern but in color as well. I hadn't ever tried to do that before but it wasn't difficult and the effect is nice.

I think what I will do to "fix" this is sew it onto a filigree piece and sew beads over the body so it looks larger. Maybe I will post it again once I do that.

I will be sharing an antique pattern available on the web in my next post so watch for that.

Motif Twenty

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

....that's the sigh of relief that comes when you've made it through another tax season. Obviously the deadline is not until Tuesday, but it always seems to slow down right at the end.

This is why I haven't posted in nearly a month! Just too busy to do any scanning or posting. I do quite a bit of tatting in the evenings when I get home from work in preparation for the busy show season, but never manage to get any of it onto my computer.

Here is motif number 20 - not my original design - but very different and unusual, I think. It was time consuming and tedious, because of there being so many chains, but I am very pleased with the results. I will probably turn this into one of my pin/pendant combinations - so it can be worn as either thing.


Thank you to Shay for posting the pattern, which can be found here. As soon as I saw this I just had to try it - I've got a lot of books, and I've seen a lot of different tatting patterns, but never anything like this.

Right now I am working on a butterfly from Rozella Linden's book "Tatted Butterfly Garden." The wings are made with Marilee's Watermelon Tourmaline thread - my FAVORITE color of all time! I am having difficulty with the magic butterfly body, though, and I am about ready to e-mail Ruth and get some help! It frustrates me to no end when I can't figure out something on my own, so I'll probably fiddle with it a little more. When I am finished with it, it will be motif number 21, so look for it in the next week or so.

Motif Nineteen

Here is an adapted edging pattern done in a very thick silk (about a size 10, and a little thicker than I really enjoy working with.) But I love silk for tatting - and the colors - yum!

Motif Eighteen

With 3" of snow on the ground I'm ready for spring already. That must be why I'm doing so many butterflies and flowers lately - I just can't seem to stay away from them! I haven't posted them all here, but I did one yesterday that's a little unusual so I thought I'd post it.

This one is an aqua flower - yes, my own pattern but a very simple one - with soft chartreuse butterflies on it.

Here is more of a close up so you can see the detail better. The chain is beads over thread with tatted rings in between - I like the look but it is a bit time consuming and requires planning ahead of time.

I had a lot of fun designing and executing this one - and this is one of my all time favorite color combinations as well, so I'm a happy camper. I really need to get some tatting done today, though, so ciao!

Book?

I have had a few people ask me if I am going to be publishing a book, so I wanted to address that - at this time, unfortunately, I have no plans to do that. My knowledge of programs to draw patterns, writing them out long-hand, or actually putting a book together is limited at best. Not to mention the fact that I have no time. Someday...maybe. For right now, though, I just love the tatting process, and I love making jewelry, so that's where my focus is.

If someone would like to recommend a program for diagramming patterns, I'd love to hear it. I can almost guarantee any book I write would only have diagrams and not be written longhand, because that's how I design and document patterns, by sketching - I never write them out.