Tag: quilting thread

Finishing small things

In the last month or so I’ve talked several times about using small threads and shown the beginnings of  my attempts with them.  I actually finished all three things I started with them.
I mentioned here about trying out a quilting thread. This is the completed piece.
Motif out of off-white quilting thread.
It is a pretty basic clover and chain pattern that I just doodled. 
In this post I talked about using Gütermann thread.
Motif in Gütermann silk quilting thread.
This motif was also made without referring to a pattern. 
In this same post I showed a shuttle that was given to me that was already loaded with a pink and white variegated thread, maybe size 70 or 80. I was wondering if I should make a small doily with it. 
Unknown thread size or brand.
This little three-round piece.was the hardest to make due to thread breakage.  I think it has to do with the age of the thread.  The first two rounds went well, with little trouble, but the thread started breaking on the last round.  In fact the thread broke as I connected the last chain to the base of the first ring so closely I glued it instead of hiding the ends.

Here are the three pieces together with a regular Clover shuttle to show the sizes of the finished pieces. 
It was quite the experience working with these small threads.  For whatever reason prior to this I was pretty leery of working with anything this small, but now I have some ideas for making several things in small thread – if I ever get to them. My to-do list keeps growing and growing.
“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.”
Og Mandino
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Tatting Tea Tuesday on a Small Scale

This week I’ve been tatting in small thread.  
This is Gütermann silk quilting thread. in color 386.  I bought it last August when I bought the Perfect Quilter thread.  I have been carrying it around with me for a while but had not even put it on a shuttle until about a week ago.  Other than being so small as to be hard to see it is easy to tat with.  I only broke the thread once while working on this piece (so far!) and it actually broke about four inches from the ring I was closing.  I have to work on this when I have lots of light, as much for the size as the color. It’s been fun working in such fine thread though challenging, especially as I’m working on my vest between times, which is in size 10 thread.  I’m finally remembering to number this for my 25 Motif Challenge – I think it’s number 11.
Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I had a cup of Celestial Seasonings Cinnamon Apple Spice tea with a touch of honey out of a big mug, not this little cup.  This is a demitasse cup and saucer that my mother gave me.  The cup is 2 ¼” tall, which is how I know it’s a demitasse (meaning ‘half-size’), or child size, cup.  I didn’t realize that the size of a cup determined what it is!  Did you?  I’ve always thought it was a tea cup if you drank tea out of it 🙂  Today while trying to correctly spell ‘demitasse’ I found a blog that describes the history of the cup and saucer and how their sizes define their use.  If you’d like to learn more check it out here on the blog “Demitasse Cups & Saucers”

The white shuttle is another gift from my mother, found at a yard sale. All of the variegated  pink and white thread was wound on it, extending way past the edges of the shuttle.  I don’t know how long it had been wound but, surprisingly, the tips are still tightly together.  In fact I’ll probably have to work on it a bit if I want to tat with it. Unwinding the size 70 or 80 thread wasn’t bad but going the other way took a lot of effort.  There are no markings on the shuttle to say who made it.  I’ve seen similar ones before but I don’t remember where or what brand they were. It has a very smooth surface, is about 3 inches long, and in very good condition.  Both blades are slightly marred in one place along the edge, but other than that it looks brand new.  As it’s already wound and has a ball thread I guess I’ll have to see what I can make with it.  How about a demitasse doily?

“You can often measure a person by the size of his dream.”
Robert H. Schuller
http://thinkexist.com


I linked to Artful Affirmations

It’s Tuesday

The 2014 TIAS continues
The most often guessed is a sail boat but I’m not sure, Jane can be pretty sneaky! (in a good way!)  Whatever it is we are more than halfway through.
I have been tatting but don’t have pictures of what I’ve spent the most time on.  I do have this little piece made with Coats Cotton Machine Quilting thread.  I don’t really have a plan for this piece but I had the thread with me (why? I found it in a drawer and stuck it in my box…) so thought I’d try working with it.

And it was very trying.  I usually tat with size 20 thread and I’ve got a project going in size 10, so working with this was quite a chore.  I would get about three rings and a chain done then break the thread on the next ring.  Today I very consciously made my stitches and pulled the rings closed very carefully. Success! The thread didn’t break! 

Last week Tuesday I didn’t have to go to work due to snow and bad roads.  We got somewhere between eight and ten inches by the time it was done.  And it hasn’t melted yet!  Which is very unusual around here.  Then Sunday night we got another two inches.  But the sun is shining today and they say we’ll get above freezing maybe tomorrow.  By Sunday it should be in the 60’s (ºF) and the snow mostly gone.

We found some lovely tea related images from tea loving Grace in Italy - which we have put together as a montage and thought we would share...I haven’t been doing Tatting Tea Tuesdays much lately, not because I haven’t thought about it but I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee instead of tea.  Including today.  But I did get some tatting done and I’ve found a blog that’s all about tea cups!  If you also like tea and tea cups check out Artful Affirmations.  

                                                                              image from Pinterest

Small threads, vacation and TIAS

I did a little bit more with those small threads, King Tut and Perfect Quilter.  Okay, mostly to work them off my shuttles 🙂
The butterfly at the top is in Lizbeth size #20, the yellow on the right in Perfect Quilter, the smallest in King Tut.  They are tatted with the same number of stitches (though the picots may not have the same ratio to stitch size.)  The edging is also Perfect Quilter.  Making this, and the crosses I posted about last week, show that I have trouble getting the picots the right size for the size of thread.
IsDihara left a comment on last week’s post about what she found out about the quilting threads.
“Since I have a ball of size 100 thread to compare against, I can confirm that WPI (wrapas per inch) for King Tut thread matches size 100.  Perfect Quilter has more WPI than size 80 Lizbeth but less than size 100 thread.  So it seems to be in between sizes.  But that could also be an issue of different plies.  Pretty sure Perfect Quilter is not a 6-ply cotton. (Don’t know why I didn’t think to check these details before now.)  Thanks Madtatter80 for wondering!”
Thanks, IsDihara, for sharing this information.
We recently went on a vacation to Colorado, to the Buena Vista area – yes, again.  For the last several years this has been our favored vacation spot, and September our favored time of year.  We have been very blessed with seeing the Aspens change to their fall colors – until this year.   They have had so much rain all summer that, unless you were at a pretty high altitude, the aspens were only barely starting to change. 
This is the Mary Murphy Mill, not far from St. Elmo, Colorado. You can see that the Aspens have turned here, but this is at about 11,000 feet.

We stopped for lunch at a likely looking spot – there was a somewhat flat area with a convenient large rock to use as a table. The altimeter app on my phone showed we were at 11,433 feet. 
After lunch I took time to take a few stitches using our ‘table’ to sit on.  You can see it was a little cool here.
Sherry Pence, LadyShuttleMaker, is doing a TIAS, found here. Her pattern won first place at the 2013 Idaho State Fair.  This is my day four.  It doesn’t quite look like the pattern 🙁  I might have to un-tat a bit and try again.  That’s okay, it’s still fun!

“By all these lovely tokens 
September days are here, 
With summer’s best of weather 
And autumn’s best of cheer.”
Helen Hunt Jackson
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