In the Meantime... Victorian Trellis Collar Ta-da!

I'm continuing to work on the "Medallion Collar" - shall I call it that? - anyone with a better name for the lovely collar from the previous post?  It's just called "collar" in the book but as there are several collars in the Priscilla Tatting Book No. 2, it would be nice to have names for the different collars so we know which one we're talking about.

Which brings me to the topic of this post, as it is about another collar from the same book.  Well, it's actually not a collar but if you remember a while back I decided to tat the Victorian Trellis Doily as a collar and I've finally finished it!  It's been finished for a while in fact but for some reason I'd never got around to sewing the last ends in and taking a photo.  

But here it is...

I'm not too sure yet with what and how to wear it but here is a photo just to give an idea of what it might look like when worn as a collar.  Are lace collars too old-fashioned?  Is there a modern way to wear them nowadays?  I hope so because I really like everything about this design, the victorian sets, the shape, the combination of elements, the balance of positive and negative spaces, etc.  You could just see it as an elaborate necklace, no?  In fact it's all in the name isn't it, showing what was valued before as jewellery... "neck-lace".

Best wishes,

Frivole

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

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

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

Started on Collar Version

I decided to start straight away on the open collar version of the Victorian Trellis Doily.  This time I'm doing the small rings as true rings instead of SCMRs.  It seems to me they sit a bit straighter than the SCMRs.  Also, unusually, I'm not reversing work to make them (you normally would after a chain) so I'm kind of "cheating" by not reversing work and still making the ring with the one shuttle (otherwise I'd have to have two shuttles) but it looks fine.

In the end, I chose classic white for the collar.

I was going to make a button loop at the beginning but the button I have fits nicely in the diamond shaped space at the start of the round.  I will add a button at the other end.  You can then choose to button it in any space to adjust size.

Best wishes,

Frivole