Category: butterfly

Tatting Tea Tuesday with IsDihara

I’m still here in Washington, DC, with my daughter and her family. Shortly after I got here I received an email from IsDihara. As she lives close by, she asked if I’d like to me her. !!! Of course! To meet another tatter and one who blogs as well – oh, yeah!

We didn’t meet right away because I was here to help my daughter after she had surgery. By this week she was feeling much better and ready to get out of the house. So I emailed IsDihara and we arranged to me at the Potomac Mills Mall. And on Tuesday, no less!

Here we are, IsDihara on the left, me on the right, having a cup of tea. As neither of us knew what the other looked like it was like, how will we know who the other is? As I knew we (my daughter, her baby and my husband) were there first I figured the easiest way to let her know that it was me was to pull out my shuttles. So there we sat, in the food court of the mall, me tatting away. She had no trouble finding me!

I was so glad we could meet! As my daughter said to me later, IsDihara and I could have spent all afternoon talking. And she brought me the prize I won from her Halloween giveaway! How fortuitous is that!
Isn’t this pretty? This isn’t the best picture – it’s wonderful in person. It has a tatted pumpkin edging around it and the front has a pumpkin. Check out her blog Ambitatterous, I think her picture is better.

It was a great afternoon, a wonderful Tatting Tea Tuesday!

I have gotten a little tatting done. As I’m away from home I only have a few colors to work with so I’ve been doing a lot in the Lizbeth Falling Leaves in size 20. These two butterflies are my pattern, with Lizbeth size 20 black as the body and the edging. The heart is Tracy’s Heart, by Heather from The Tarnished Tatter, in the same threads. This heart is easy to do and will come in handy for notes and letters and such.

This has been a great week here with my daughter and her family. And a little extra bonus meeting another tatting blogger! And I’ve even seen a little of Washington – more tomorrow, I hope!

Happy Tatting everyone!

Tatting Tea Tuesday with more horses and butterflies

It’s Tatting Tea Tuesday again, and yes, I’m still doing horse and butterfly paperclip bookmarks. They’ve been a lot of fun and I have a lot of new colors to try them in. I’m getting quite the herd of horses and a rabble of butterflies. Debbie’s sea horse makes such a wonderful horse for this, don’t you think? The butterflies are my patterns.

All of these bookmarks are made with Lizbeth thread size 20. From the left starting with the horse: horse in Caribbean and purple; butterfly in Grape Pizazz and purple; horse in Grape Pizazz; flower with pearls in Grape Pizazz; butterfly in Jewels and purple; the cross is in purple.

This morning I sat down with a cup of tea to finish off this cross that I started last night. I’m not sure who to credit the pattern to as it’s so very basic. You don’t so much follow a pattern as follow the logistics of a cross. I vary the count of the double stitches and picots in the rings and chains as the mood dictates every time I make it.

A family member of my boss’s family died a few days ago and I thought I’d include a cross in the card for him and his family. Nice idea, I thought. But I had the most horrible time getting this one done! I was joining in the wrong places, twisting threads, tying knots – the wrong kind – left, right and sideways! There was once I tried to close a ring with the body of the cross inside! If I hadn’t needed to get it done today I would have put it aside for another day. I finally got it done, in about twice the time it should have taken me. (You’d think I’d had something stronger than tea!) I’m blaming my lack of concentration on my allergies as they have really started bothering me the last few days.

I really need to get on to some other projects, but these bookmarks have been such fun! I guess if I’m going to go to a craft show this fall I’ll need a lot, so I shouldn’t feel too guilty staying with them. And if I have trouble with them, they’re just small stuff, nothing tragic if I tangle the threads a bit – I’ll just start over!

Wishing all of you a wonderful week and Happy Tatting!

Tatting Tea Tuesday Aug 11, 2009


It’s Tatting Tea Tuesday again and I even have a cup of tea today!

I have actually gotten a few more paperclip bookmarks done. The purple one is from last week, and the green is using the same modified pattern from Debbie Arnold. It’s made from DMC Cebelia size 20, green #955. The two butterflies are my own pattern; the pink is DMC Perle cotton size 8, pink variegated #116 and the blue is Manuela size 20, light blue #008.

I was trying to write down the pattern for the butterflies and find I’m having trouble with it. When I’m tatting my own patterns, while I’m doing them for the first time, I decide I want this element to go that way, and another element to go this way – I don’t really pay attention to which shuttle I’m using, I just know which one it needs to be to go in the direction I want the pattern to go. The same way for reversing the work and keeping track of up/down (I’m very much a upside/downside tatter!), I know when to reverse and which side is up, but keeping track for writing down later..! This inattention makes writing down the patterns a bit of a challenge. I think I’m my own worst enemy!

You know, if I would make everything in two colors to start with, at least I’d know which shuttle I was using. Some things might end up looking a little strange, but I could keep those as my samples.

Or I could write down the patterns as I go along. Or not! Talk about tedious and losing the flow!

Or maybe I should figure out how to diagram tatting. So many others do that, and there are a lot of programs that can be used. I like following diagrammed patterns and I’d really like to learn how. Another something I should do that takes time, but I think would be well worth it.

Butterflies

As I mentioned earlier, I was in a butterfly exchange through InTatters. This is the beautiful butterflies I got from my exchange partner, CindyK from Minnesota.

The large one is “Green Butterfly” designed by Martha Ess, found in the Intatters patterns. She made it with Lizbeth thread size 20 in “Jewels” and DMC Cebelia size 20 white. And she sent the little one to keep it company. Aren’t they wonderful?

CindyK considers herself a beginner as she’s only been tatting a few years. She just finished Phase one of the T.A.T. program. If you get the chance stop on over to congratulate her on a job well done! I think she did a great job on these butterflies. Now I just need to decide where I’m going to display them…

This butterfly is the one I sent to CindyK. This was a lot of fun making. I tried Lizbeth thread for the first time with it. I have seen that a lot of people are trying it and liking it so I bought some. And I really really like the Caribbean!

So I just had to do this butterfly in it. This is the Southwest Butterfly by Tatting Goddess made with Lizbeth size 20 thread, Dark Purple #633, Caribbean #122 & Black #604. (www.esnips.com/web/TattingGoddessPatterns). I’m calling this #20 of my 25 Motif Challenge.

I’ve been working on my daughter’s birthday coasters, which I’ll post another day. I think I’ve come up with a solution as to what color to make them.

Yesterday my husband and I went for a day trip, just the two of us. In the afternoon we stopped by a couple of antique stores and spent a few hours browsing through all of the neat – and not so neat- things in them. I have serveral things to share after I have the pictures uploaded. I’m pretty excited about all of my finds.

But that is for another day. We’ve been very busy this weekend – we had three days off from work! – with family and friends and just spending time together. I feel so much more relaxed than I have for weeks.

That’s all for today. My shuttles are calling to me. I better do something with them before they tie themselves in knots.

A little bitty doily and a horse

A few weeks ago I needed an ecru doily for a gift. I had a colored doily but found out that the recipient really liked ecru as this was more in line with her home decor (I like to please). Soooo, as usual, instead of going with an existing pattern I tried to come up with something that didn’t take too long. And this is the result.

I call it Arches Over Arches. This is made with DMC ecru (of course!) in size 30. I came up with this from a center I found in my old stuff that was made with size 10, which was much bigger. I think this was supposed to be an edging that went wrong. But it made a nice center for a doily.

The other two rounds I came up with this time around. I have several ideas for the next time I make it – and I do have plans to make it – and my husband has a couple of really neat suggestions, also.

There’s nothing here to compare it to so you can’t tell the size. It’s pretty small, only about 4 inches across. So maybe it’s too small to be considered a doily, but I would use it under a vase for a single rose or some such, so I call it a doily.

I’ve also had another idea in mind that I worked on last night. After seeing all the neat ideas of using a large paperclip as a bookmark, I thought a large paperclip with a horse head would be neat. Now, I make my own bookmarks and doilies and such, but coming up with something like this has not turned out well. I’m not showing my attempts, just say they met a quick end. But the Internet is our friend and makes finding the many wonderful people with great ideas easy to find if you go looking.

If you go to ds9designs you will find that Debbie Arnold has a very cute seahorse pattern. I saw it and thought “if you start here and leave that off, it would make a really nice horse head pattern.” So last night I tried it with thread I already had on a shuttle. (The colors would have made a wonderful seahorse!)

.

This is made with Lizbeth Caribbean size 20. I think I need to make the base a little wider and the neck maybe not quite so long. Then I need to try putting it on a paperclip. Maybe in a horse-y color. And then again, maybe not. To be continued…

Most of this last week was spent finishing the butterfly for the Intatters butterfly exchange. I got it done in time (just barely!) and sent it off to Cindy in Minnesota. After I know she has it I will post a picture of it. I thought it came out well and I’m looking forward to sharing it.

Tatting Tea Tuesday

This morning I brewed a cup of herb tea – mint, mmmm!- and sat down to work on my exchange butterfly and what do I see but a BIG mistake! I missed a join and a chain, and it wasn’t the last thing I did, either. Grumble, grumble, *sigh*

Instead of finishing the butterfly I retro tatted. And it’s dark thread so it took me awhile (the eyesight is one of the first things to go, obviously!) to get back to where I started last night. I knew I was tired last night, but I didn’t know I was that tired! If I had just not picked it up after work I would have been done with the wings by now!

And then I had trouble reading the pattern for the middle! I turned it this way, and that way, and turned it over…. I finally figured it out (I think) but again, didn’t get as far as I thought I would.

So instead of showing at least a part of the butterfly – as a hint until the recipient gets it – I have nothing to show for my tatting time today. I spent all my time either retro tatting or tatting and had no time left for pictures.

But the tea was delicious!