Butterflies -- Motifs 11 - 13

Do you ever have a little tatting voice inside your head? Do you ever have a slump where you don't feel like tatting, or maybe you feel like it, but can't pick anything to make? A while back I was in a slump, and as I would sort through my balls of thread hoping for inspiration for the next project, the little voice would say, "I don't want these, I want to tat with some different colors." Which was odd, because, believe me, I have lots of colors. Eventually, I figured it out, I needed HDT. Or in this case, hand-painted thread as Karey calls hers. I pulled out a skein of her "County Fair" thread and a much admired book from the shelf and was back in business.

All of these butterflies are from Tatted Butterflies by Adelheid Dangela. There are quite a lot of good designs in this book. The patterns are all in diagram form, so maybe too hard for a new beginner, but highly recommended for anyone with a little experience, enough to look at the picture and know when to reverse work or switch shuttles.

Ta-tilicious Thread & etc

Jess! at Tat-ilicious has very generously sent me some of her HDT.

This is her "Harvest" colorway, with a nice mix of red/gold/brown in both size 20 and 80.

Here is some "Red Velvet," a very warm rich reddish brown. The other is a skein from a trial run that wasn't what she was looking for, but I like this one more each time I look at it. Sort of grey/yellow/fuschia. I will have to find good projects for all of these.

I am excited to hear that she will be coming to the Palmetto Tat Days this year. It is so much better shopping for thread in person since cameras and monitors don't always capture its true personality, especially for HDT.

The spinning adventure continues. Here is some very brown undyed Corriedale, and some bright hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester.  Before I started this, I thought wool was just, well, wool.  It turns out there are umpteen varieties of it, not to mention fiber from other animals.

Believe it or not, I actually do some tatting once in a while. I made several butterflies last week, but I've been too lazy busy to work in the ends and block them.

But I did find this picture of a piece I made a while back and never showed. This is Karey's Heart of the Rose from her Hearts Belong to Tatting, made with some her own HDT. Since it comes from a book, I can count it toward my own special rules 25 Motif Challenge. I think this comes to number 10 for this round of the challenge. I haven't been doing too well getting this round accomplished.

Tat Days Registration is Open

Registration for Palmetto Tat Days is now open. Click here for a link to their homepage.  You can click on the link there for Sneak Peaks to see the class projects an descriptions.  (The usual pages for teacher biographies and more detailed class descriptions are still in progress.)  I always have a wonderful time with lots of wonderful people.

And here are my completed projects from the classes I took at the Finger Lakes Tatting Convention earlier this year.  You should be impressed.   I have some other class project UFO's that are years old :)

This is Dani the Geek's Celtic Claddagh Heart.  Isn't that braided effect interesting?  If you look too close, you'll see I didn't get the second side exactly right.  Oops, shouldn't have tried doing that one while watching TV.  My colors are arranged a bit different from the pattern since I changed my mind midstream what I wanted to do.

This one is Carolyn Groves' Heart on a Wooden Ring.  When I first looked at it, I wondered how she got the tatting to go round and round the ring since the shuttle wouldn't fit through the hole.  The solution was simple and ingenious and something I would never have thought of.  I like her idea to use wooden rings. They are prettier than the plastic cabone rings and also lightweight.   I think she said they came from FireMountain Gems.