2024 - The Year of Winging It, Part III: The Dalek

This one likely won't mean much to you unless you are familiar with the Doctor Who TV series.

I don't remember quite when and why I decided to tat a Dalek, but suddenly it was something I very much wanted to do.  I needed it to have the authentic shape while also having a strong tatting/handicraft flavor.  Buttons! of course I needed buttons, and it may have been seeing a pack of gray buttons at JoAnne's that sent me over the edge.  Add in some bead caps and bicone beads and I was set to go.

I'll admit I needed some help in winging it.  I found a pattern to print and make a paper Dalek somewhere online and used that as a guide to shape the various parts.  The 9 sections making up the base include a few rectangles, but most are irregular shapes.  I thought I was so clever translating them into tatting until I realized what a jagged edge I had at the bottom.  After a few false starts, I decided the only way out was to go all around the bottom with 1 ds, picot, with the picots being varying heights to even up that edge.  The next round was 1 ds, CWJ (Catherine wheel join) all around, with the occasional vsp for joining the following dark gray block tatting rounds. Then on to more trial and error for the upper sections.  Everything was joined as I went, with no sewing or tying together except the arms and antenna were added later.

I was really happy how it turned out, but it was very hard, so I don't plan to make another one.

 

2024 - The Year of Winging It, Part II: Sunflowers

In the fall of 2023, I had the honor to help test tat for Shawna Wachs' book,  Flower Garden.  Around that same time, I visited the Van Gogh Immersive Experience.  And I thought, could I make her sunflowers to look like his sunflowers?  It was a few months before I could dive into that project, but yes, I could.  I started with her sunflower, daisy, and mum patterns and gradually reproduced the painting.  Sometimes, my flowers were pretty close to her patterns, and sometimes I used her petal style as inspiration.  Sometimes my flower centers were like hers, and sometimes they were not, to better imitate the painting.  So, that's where the winging it theme fits in.

Here's my completed, slightly 3D picture.  I'm quite happy with it, and it won first place for framed or mounted tatting at the NC State Fair.

Here are a couple of Shawna's flowers, made according to the book:

How I did it:  I found a copy of Van Gogh's painting online and printed it the size I wanted my picture to be.  I put that into a  plastic page protector.  As I went along, I compared my tatting to the picture to judge shaping and size.  As each piece was completed, I taped it to the page protector.  Once they were all done, then I sewed them onto the fabric.  A word of warning if you ever attempt something similar:  I made the printout 10 inches tall, planning to use a 8x10 frame since that's a common size.  I didn't realize that while an 8x10 picture fits inside the frame, the actual opening in the front is a bit smaller, so it looked too crowded.  Luckily, I had an 8 1/2 x 11 frame on hand and switched to mounting for that size.

More free advice:  picture frames in stores are expensive.  Framed pictures in thrift shops are cheap.  Take a measuring tape with you to the thrift shop to check the size.  Find one the right size and you can throw out the old picture and add your own.
 

News Flash - Finger Lakes Tatting Conference Early Registration

In case you didn't know...

The Finger Lakes Tatting Conference will be held this year, April 4 - 6.  I always have a wonderful time.  There is a great line-up of teachers coming (isn't there always?) This year's conference will be at a new venue in Burdett, NY, which looks closer to Watkins Glen than before.  Early registration discount price is in effect through February 1.  

For complete information, visit the Finger Lakes Tatting Group site HERE.

Below are projects from the class I will be teaching.  It looks like a Dorset button, but is made differently using a tatting shuttle, and then you tat a motif around it.

 

2024 - The Year of Winging It, Part I: The Hat

Looking back, my tatting year of 2024 was dominated by 3 large projects, all of which were marked by varying degrees of diverging from the pattern or no pattern at all.

The Online Tatting Class began the year seeking to recreate this hat from the April 1922 issue of Needlecraft magazine.  Vintage patterns are one of my passions, so of course I joined in.  You can find the pattern on their site here (select Tatted Hat Project).  If you are a member of their Facebook group, you can see the progress of assorted members.

I was going merrily along until the instructions called for attaching the 18 pattern repeats of the top of the hat to 8 motifs around the side.  No, no, no!  I must have symmetry! So my hat has 9 motifs around the side, joining to the top very nicely.  (The pattern also called for tying or sewing sections of the hat together, but mine is all tatted together with joins.  I'm stubborn that way.)  To get the top and the sides to fit, I altered that last round of the top, was that Round 13?  A slightly longer chain here, an omitted join there, and its diameter grew wide enough to fit.  The little fill-in motifs became ovals instead of circles to lie flat.  I made a few other changes as I went along.  So a little winging it led me to an improved version still true to the original.

Happy Belated New Year!

 Happy New Year to all my friends.... a week late.

How many times have I resolved each year to post more often on my blog?  Will this be the one?  Is the lateness of this post an indication that it won't?  Time will tell.

I'm moving into a new computer and haven't transferred files over yet, so here's the only crafty photo I have to share right now.  It's a Dorset Button, swirl pattern, worked in the traditional way, with Lizbeth metallic thread.  Instructions from "Dorset Ring Buttons" by Gina Barrett.  More on a nontraditional way to make a button that I thought up later.

Looking Forward to Lodi

I am honored to have been chosen as one of the teachers at this year's Finger Lakes Tatting Conference, to be held in Lodi, NY this April 12-14.  There are social get-togethers on Friday and classes on Saturday and Sunday.  See their website here for complete information:   http://www.fingerlakestatting.com/  Note that the early registration discount is in effect through February 1. 

Here are 3 versions of the Maltese Ring motif I will be teaching.  I'm just now noticing that I never blocked some of these squares. How embarrassing! But if I don't post today, it may be too long before my next chance.
 

Other teachers will be K Boniface, Bonnie Swank, Mary Anna Robinson, Kaye Judt, Sharon Fawns, Shawna Wachs, D'Amone Popp, Ruth Perry, and of course, Karey Solomon.  Doesn't that sound like a great time?

I Should Have Known Better

When choosing the thread/yarn for a project, I will pose the question, who's doing the work - the thread or the pattern?  Or to put it another way, the thread/yarn or the pattern may be busy, but not both.  Look at the socks in my previous post.  That yarn called for a very simple pattern.  I usually reserve variegated threads for edgings or small motifs, or alternate rounds with a solid color in a larger piece.  If there are several rounds of a variegated thread, the colors may pool or draw the eye away from the structure of the pattern.  Some people are better at this than I am and produce beautiful things with variegates.

Last summer, when I wanted to make Dora Young's Square Pinwheel, I had trouble finding a pair of threads I felt like working with.  There was a Lizbeth variegated ball (sorry, can't remember the number) with the colors all about the same strength.  I thought maybe I could pull it off, since Jane had made a very nice version of the same pattern with an ombre thread, but no, I just wasn't happy when it was done.  It's not horrible, but I don't think the pinwheel structure shows up as well as it should.  (The scan actually looks better than in real life.)  I switched to safer solid colors, sigh.

Incidentally, the technique Dora Young used in this pattern also appears in the Bath Tatting Book of 1865.  I've always wondered if she had a copy of that book, or independently recreated the technique.