More on Collar

 I'm now working on the penultimate round!  But here is the 7th round completed.

Now that I've completed rounds 6 & 7,

I can see that I would need to adjust where I start them

to have a better line on the edge:

It would be very difficult to have a straight edge all the way down due to the shape of the elements but I think I would consider not making the very first large ring of the 6th round.  So instead of starting with a large ring on that round, I would start with the small ring that is attached to the previous round.

I decided to practice my Inkscape skills and made two images to illustrate what I'm saying above.  First of all you could just remove the large ring, the chains above and below it and the chain to the right of the small flower and it would look like the image below (I've only amended the left side of the collar and left the other for better comparison).  In this case, I think I'd then find a way of attaching the small flower to the chain next to it somehow otherwise, it would move about too much.

Or you could also remove the small flower and chain just below it and replace it with a new chain that would join the ring of round 6 to the starting point of round 7 as in the image below.

Yes, I think the second would be my preferred solution.

What do you think?

Best wishes,

Frivole

Beaded Earrings

These were gifts for one of my daughter's birthday.  She likes and wears many of my tatted earring designs but this time I made her some beaded earrings for a change.

The first pair was this one:

I really like the shape of these Arabella earrings

by Linda Genaw of Linda's Crafty Inspiration blog.

I chose colours quite similar to the first version she shows on her blog.

And as I was on a beading kick,

I decided to make her a second pair:

They are also by Linda Genaw and are called 

"Peyote Fan Earrings"

I really like how the colours turned out on these.

I think I'll have to make myself a pair!

Oh, and I also did make the bee from the previous post into another pair of earrings but I forgot to take a photo of them!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Bzzz Bzzz!

I recently made a shuttle with bees on it.  The person who purchased it said they were going to tat some bees with it!  What a nice idea.  So I asked about the pattern and this is the one:  it's simply called "Tatted Bee" and is by Nancy Tracy of the Be-stitched website.

It's rather cute!

One of my daughters promptly said she wanted a pair of earrings with these on.  So I shall be making a second one.  I couldn't find my black thread so this is Lizbeth 606 (Charcoal) with Lizbeth 611 (Gold).

And below is the shuttle with bees.

I'm very fond of bees.  They are busy in our garden at the moment, enjoying the spring blossoms. They are so vital for pollination and I definitely want to add more "bee-friendly" plants to my garden.

Has anyone tatted it before?  Does anyone know of other tatted bee patterns?

Best wishes,

Frivole

Collar, Just Three More Rounds

It took me a while to complete this last round!  Here it is, not pressed or blocked so looking a bit messy at this stage.  It will all look nice again after the next round which stabilises the large rings from this round.

And I definitely think joining to two picots together of the round above

(where the small rings of this round join to the previous round)

is much better than joining between scallops of round above

as I had done in the previous version.

However, you could probably remove two of the picots of the small ring

(the ones just before and just after the join)

as those get lost among the picots of the scallops from the previous round.

On another note, I have been advised that the "FollowbyEmailwidget" will no longer work after July.  I'm not completely sure how that will affect the lovely followers of my blog but perhaps you will no longer get notices of new posts?

Best wishes,

Frivole

Making Progress

Two more rows added!

That's the nice thing about this pattern.

There are several places where you could stop, depending on the width desired.

But for this exercise, I'm making the whole thing again

so I can see how to adapt the edges for the open version.

Best wishes,

Frivole

One More Round...

This would already make a nice collar as is.  I've also figured out that tatting it open like this makes it possible to tat rounds 1-5 continuously!  It does mean that you would have to work two of the rounds with the back facing up but you would just need to use reverse order stitches (as in front side / back side tatting) for those two rounds which is not a problem.  I often use traditional tatting but in this case, I would definitely make sure the front of all my stitches are on the same side.

On to the next round!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Round One Complete, Moving on to Round Two

Making this design open, as a collar, means that you can conveniently move from the first round to the second without having to cut and tie.  I made more repeats as I thought it might be a bit tight as a collar to be worn over clothes so I tatted 40 repeats instead of 36 in the original pattern (it can still be buttoned smaller if desired).  I added a small natural shell / mother of pearl button on the chain after the small ring, then continued with another 4 Victorian Sets to bring me to the starting point of the second round.

I see now there's another change I need to make at the beginning of the first round so that I would be able to carry on with the third round continuously too.   I need to start the first round with the same extra chain I made at the end to get me to the starting point of the 2nd round; now I will need to add it at the end which means I will not be in the right place to start the 3rd round.  Always hard to describe tatting with words but I hope you get what I mean!  

Best wishes,

Frivole