Wednesday 29 July 2020

Lost Earring

This is one of my daughter's favourite pair of earrings.  I had made them for her in "Leaf Green" a few years ago but she lost one.  Unfortunately, I'm out of Leaf Green at the moment so I re-made her a new pair in "Fern Green Med" (Lizbeth).


I really like this pattern.  The layered construction gives body to the earrings and they keep their shape nicely.  I sometimes add a large pearl in the centre but this is how my daughter had her original pair so I remade the same.

Do you have a favourite earring design that you keep coming back to?  I'd love to hear what it is!

Best wishes,
Frivole

Saturday 25 July 2020

Vintage Tatting

I was recently contacted by a young woman who had inherited a vintage piece of tatting made by her great-great-grandmother (isn't that exciting?).  She was after some advice on how to reproduce it.  It was a pleasure to be able to help her out.

This is one of the images she sent me.  



Luckily it is not a very complex design so it was definitely achievable to make this again.  They are one shuttle medallions with bare threads joined together.


These were my first samples.
I could see the number of stitches for the rings
but it was getting the right length for the picots and bare threads which was a little trickier
so that the medallions lay flat nicely.


If you were wanting to tat these medallions, they start with a centre ring of 12 stitches separated by a picot (or rather 11 picots and the last one is a mock picot to climb to the second round without cutting and tying) and the second round is small rings of 3+3, bare thread approx ¼in long and a larger ring of 5-5-5-5.

I was keen to find a way to tat the whole thing without cutting and tying and hiding threads ends along the way too!  I was excited to find a new way to hide one end in the second half of the small ring... but then realised I needed that bit of thread to join back to the last large ring at the end.  So for now, it's still best to hide both ends in the last ring.




Here are four of them joined together.
On the original sample, more decorative picots are added to
the medallions that have free edges (the ones that are not joined on all sides).


Apparently the original piece dates back to the 1800s!
I think that's pretty neat.

I hope the person can now enjoy making a new piece to match her great-great-grandmother's.

Best wishes,
Frivole