Necklace for a Friend

Here is a necklace I made as a thank you for a friend.  Tatted in one of my favourite bright turquoise thread:  Lizbeth Ocean Teal Dk, size 20.  It's actually brighter in real life but I tried photo and scan and still couldn't get the shade quite right.  Never mind, it is a wonderful blue!

This is made using my Viola pattern.  I made one in black for myself sometime ago and it does look really pretty as a necklace.

In other news... I won threads from Handy Hands!  I was so delighted!  It's awfully hard to choose though:  so many great colours and in different sizes too.  The colour suggestion I had made was for a variegated orange (autumn and pumpkins are just around the corner) but someone had already suggested a variegated orange.  Lucky for me, they still used one of the oranges from my collection to make a solid:  Coral Orange Med.  I wasn't sure if I'd like it on its own but I do; it's not as pinky as the name suggests and a really nice orange which will be great to use for autumn tatting (it's the one in the bottom right hand corner in the photo).

I think Barb's ongoing colour competition is incredibly generous and I'm always amazed that they keep bringing out new colours.  It's an amazing range of shades and a thread I really enjoy using.

Best wishes,

Frivole

New Pattern and New Video

This has taken me muuuuuuch longer than expected!  I tried so many different centres for the square motif but came back to this one with little flowers as my favourite in the end.  I found everything else was distracting too much from the shape of the violas.  So this square motif is called "Viola Posy".

The little flowers in the middle are not attached to each other.  I tried attaching them but it was changing the shape of the flowers and making them uneven.  The downside of leaving them independent is that the distance between the flowers can vary a bit... you could make the petals longer and then they would overlap slightly everywhere and this would be less obvious or you could decide to attach them on the 2nd and 4th petal is you wished.

Here's the link to the pattern

(or click on the motif above)

The pattern includes all five versions of this motif:

two necklaces, earrings,

an edging, and a repeatable motif

And finally, I had a message from a lady who was making the Christmas Tree Edging pattern.  She asked me how I made the shoe-lace trick so that there wasn't a blip of colour when doing two-colour tatting.  It was a little hard to explain in words (as tatting often is!) so I made a quick video.

Here it is:

Best wishes,

Frivole

Update: Les P'tits Oiseaux

From the comments, the French name seemed to appeal so "Les P'tits Oiseaux" it is!  I dithered and at first called it "Les Deux Oiseaux" but I preferred the idea/image of "Les P'tits Oiseaux".  I've now finished writing up the pattern (fingers crossed, everything is accurate in it).

The green version below I made for a good friend of mine last year;  she wears it regularly and says she often gets comments on it.  

Right, I'm supposed to be tidying this morning...  Not writing more blogposts!  The sun's shining and it's another glorious spring day, time to also go put the washing on the line.  I hope the sun shines where you are too.

Best wishes,

Frivole

Red & Blue Necklace

I wanted to make a gift for a helpful lady.  She told me her favourite colours were red and blue.  So I decided to combine them in a necklace for her.  This is quite a simple design as you can see but I think it's effective.  I used sodalite semi-precious beads to go with the Victorian Red Lizbeth.  I love that shade of red.  It's my perfect red.

I actually started off with a different idea.  I was making little "bows" (inspiration from Edwige Renaudin's book) which I do like the look of but I found they don't behave well as they are independent elements and some of the bows ended up upside down when worn and I thought it looked a little messy.  So I started again and ended up with the design above. 

I still like the little bows and may use them again in another design.

Here's what the necklace looks like when worn:

Yes, I think I'm satisfied with that.

I hope the lady will like it.

Off to make another one!

Best wishes,