Another Primrose, More JS, and Butterflies

After tatting Primrose by Rosemarie Peel which I wanted to try because it used a safety pin to hold the picots and I was curious...  I remade the motif using a centre ring first instead and then joining to very small picots.

Here are both motifs, side by side.  What do you think?  My conclusion is that I'm not sure it's worth using the safety pin which I found fiddly to work with.  Maybe, the chains lie a bit more easily next to each other with the pin but that's about it.  The second flower looks nearly the same to me and was much easier to make by tatting a centre ring of single picots separated by one double stitch and then carrying on with the chain-ring-chain-join of the second round.  Simple.

In my hastiness I forgot to carry on and make the tail on the second motif.  It was too late, I had cut the threads.

Then I decided to try another motif from Jan Stawasz's book "Tatted Treasures.  As you may know, squares always appeal to me so it had to be this one.  In the pattern, he joins these to plain ring squares which I don't like as much so I was thinking I might try joining a few of these together.  I think they'd look interesting.  Not so fond of this colour though (another DMC Babylo).

I'm always fascinated by how different a square motif looks whether viewed on its side or on its point - don't you think?

And finally, Umintsuru said in a previous post that she'd like to see the butterflies better.  So here's a close-up that shows the 1st round of butterflies and a bit of the second round.  They are similar but slightly different.  Personally, I think the eye is distracted by the round that follows the butterflies.  If it was me, I'd have made a more full band to enclose the butterflies rather than those long chains which mean that you loose the shape of the butterflies a the top, I think.

Just realised, looking at the photos that I said above I wasn't fond of the colour for the Jan Stawasz motif and my doily looks the same colour!  But the doily is made in Lizbeth Mocha Light and in real life does look different than the DMC Babylo colour which is darker, browner and with a strange pink tinge to it.

I finally updated my patterns page.  I was trying to add to it yesterday and accidentally erased a big chunk of it and it took me AGES to find all the photos again and put back all the links.  The layout is still a bit weird as the images keep jumping about the place and wanting to misbehave for some strange reason I don't understand.  But now all patterns and all links are there.

One last thing to say for today:  I'm all excited, I've finally had a taker for tatting lessons!  A friend is coming over on Tuesday and I will show her how to tat.  I hope it goes well, and she takes to it!

Best wishes,
Frivole

A bit of this, a bit of that...

Been going through some books yesterday and today as I was looking things up to answer questions I'd been asked.  Came upon this motif in Occhi Schiffchenspitze Frivolité by Marianne Langwieser and Tatiana Scharowa (you know, the book with the peacocks).  It reminded me a bit of the posy pattern by Mary Konior.  It was a bit fiddly to tat but I think it turned out pretty.

Tatted in Lizbeth, size 20, Wildflower Garden and Antique Blue Med.

And yesterday I received in the post a booklet of patterns by Rosemarie Peel called "20 Tatted Motifs". I found it on Ebay and bought it just because I had seen someone (sorry, I can't recall who!) writing about making a design where the picots and chains were slipped on a safety pin before joining them with a final ring in the centre.  The technique interested me so I had to see that particular pattern for myself. 

Funnily enough, after I bought the booklet, I found that this same technique appears in the German book though it doesn't seem to be linked to a particular pattern and unfortunately, I can't read the page of explanation about it!

Anyway, here is a pattern called Primrose.  The centre ring ended up being a bit tight for me and may have benefitted from a few extra stitches... on the other hand I quite like the slight overlap of the petals. And I like the technique!  Might come in handy for future pattern designing... you never know.  I'm still trying to think though what's the difference between doing that or just making a centre ring with picots first and then attaching the petals to it afterwards.  I will have to try both versions and see.

 And finally, I decided to join Jane Eborall's TIAS this year, for the first time.  So here is the first instalment... not much to go by yet so really curious to see what the next bit will be.

Best wishes,

Frivole