Saturday 30 April 2016

Tatting bonanza!

After the sheeply vest project, I needed to do something else for a while. All the washing, carding and spinning + knitting was rather intense there for a while, but I am proud to have finished my plan!
But, it was time to swap crafts :)

I was going up north, and it is always a good idea to bring some handywork. My parents live in a quite remote area, with not much to do. I really don't mind that, but I need to keep my hands busy. I hadn't been tatting for some time, so I brought my shuttles and thread.

There are lots of great tatting blogs online, and a generous lot of them offer some free patterns. Great for us newbies to get some practise. Tatting by the Bay is one very good one, and there I found this lovely square pattern, named Priscilla. Very lovely, but filled with joins that are so easy to forget, and varying stitch count in the different rings. I have a monkey mind (very prone to wandering) and am used to knitting, which you can do while watching/listening to the telly. None of that with this one, so I quickly learned to concentrate. I probably tatted this pattern as much backwards (to pick up the faulty tatting) as I did forwards. Ooopsie!

It said on the pattern that it should take 6 hours, but lets just say I have a long way to go on my speed..... Nevermind, I got it finished, and gave it to my mum as a little gift before I left :)


The Priscilla square, in crochet cotton.


I also like Le blog de Frivole, a tatting and crochet blog. I found a really nice border that I wanted to try, based on a vintage tatting pattern from Tina Fraubergers books from 1919, and 1921. The old books are available as scans online, a great resource for us who like to dig into history. Luckily for me, Frivole has kindly reworked the  border pattern a bit. The originals are in German, and I am not very good at that....

The border is made up of small crowns, and I just used my trusty crochet yarn to test it. The thread is quite thick in comparison with tatting thread, and not as nice, but it is cheap and will do for practise. As I got going, I quite liked it, so I decided to finish it as a small tablecloth/napkin thing. I have plans for future hankerchiefs, so this was an excellent opportunity to try both the border and tiny hand rolled hems.

Tina Frauberger crowns edging.


I was quite happy with the result, but the corners on the border was not described in the pattern, so I had to make them up as I went. The border is tatted separate from the cloth, so when I sewed it on, they wouldn't lay flat. Need to work on that next time around. Happy with the hem on the cloth though! Not as fiddly as I feared.



Lastly, I've tatted my first little doily. The pattern is also from Tatting by the Bay, and is free here.
It is called the Frauberger doily, and was actually a quick tat. I finished it in two evening sessions, not bad for me, I think. I will make this again, in proper thread, I still find it nice to test tat the patterns first, as I am still learning and making mistakes. Better do that with cheap thread.


Frauberger doily, in chrochet cotton.


Speaking of thread, I feel my tatting is coming along now, so I treated myself with said proper thread. These are all Lizbeth balls (apart from the white one), and this thread is something else, I tell ya!! And the colors....like candy :)


This is real cotton candy!



Wow, the difference! I am in the middle of a new project now that is meant for gifts, but as a sneak peek I can show you these ear rings that I made from scrap thread left on my shuttle. Cute, huh?







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