Tatting Old and New

I've finally been able to visit my family again after more than two years!  It's wonderful to be back and to spend time with family and friends I've really missed during that time.

It's been lovely to find that two doilies I made for my father several years ago are still in use and on display in his home.

The first one was a design by Renulek if I recall correctly.

And the second one is a design by Mary Konior

which I combined with a border by Jan Stawasz

(I write about it here)

During my stay I knitted a pair of sock/bootees

for my new niece.  It's a free design by Garnstudio

called "Mini Snow Boots"

knitted in very soft alpaca wool.

Next is a vintage small doily that I discovered one of my friends had.

It's a actually a piece of "cro-tatting" as you can see

the crochet stitches on some of the rounds.

I took a photo and might try to reproduce it.

Lastly I've not yet worked more on the edging from the previous post

but I started working on the motifs for the collar I also mentioned in the previous post.

I chose to make it in natural écru.

Autumn is on its way.  The maples are starting to turn their glorious shades of red, orange and yellow.  I hope all is well with you!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Priscilla Edging No. 8

Priscilla Tatting Book No. 2, what a great book!  It contains many designs I love, including the Victorian Lattice Doily which I have now made several times.  

Victorian Lattice Doily
(that's the name I gave it as in the book it's only called "Doily")

Many years ago I started making the collar from page 31 but never finished it.  I think I will tackle it again one day.  

It's a gem of a vintage book which can be found online here.

In the meantime though, I thought I'd tackle something a little smaller and edging no. 8 caught my attention.  

I like it but I'm not happy with it at the moment.  I like the shape of it but the round circles in the middle are really difficult to make neatly.  It's a rather large ring that has 41 stitches and when I pull it closed, it tends to distort and not look even and symmetrical.  I tried a few different things in the sample above and that's also why the edging doesn't look all the same (I changed some joins and tried the centre ring on a double core for example).  I also don't like that the small rings at the bottom stick out further than the picots of the large centre rings... if you were to sew this edging onto something, would you just sew the small rings down and leave the large rings unattached?  It seems to me it would be better if they were on the same line.

I'm planning on working on this edging some more to see if I could modify it a bit to solve some of those issues... and maybe even design a corner for it?  Perhaps it will go around the corner quite easily without many modifications by simply omitting the bottom small ring and joining three repeats together.  I need to test that.

Is the empty space of the big ring too large?  Should I fill the centre with another smaller ring maybe?  All comments welcome!

Best wishes,

Frivole