Reinventing the Wheel

I love old fashioned tatting.  One of my favorites is the classic wheel motif. 

Yes, this one here.

It turns out the wheel is quite well suited to be adapted to buttons.  Simply omit the center ring and join the small rings directly to the button.

There is no "one true" pattern for the wheel.  The number of stitches or picots may vary as long as the concept is the same.  For the blue wheel above, worked with size 20 thread, the inner rings are 5 + 5 and the outer rings are 5 ± 3 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 3 ± 5.  The buttons here are about 1/2 inch diameter.  

Totally independently, my friend Stephanie was making wheels with buttons about the same time.  Her stitch count was similar, but her buttons were a bit bigger, around 5/8 inch.  Tension and the length of the bare thread spaces and picots may play a part in the difference.  You can make your rings a little bigger or smaller to fit whatever buttons you have.

Guess what else the wheel can adapt to? Ice drops!  I'll be teaching that at Palmetto TatDays in September.

Butterfly names

I'm usually not much good at coming up with pattern names.  And I don't know a lot about real life butterflies. Thanks to a link to a butterfly book shared by Little Grey Bungalow, I see there is a family of butterflies called Fritillary (or Fritillaria) close enough in shape I can use it to name my large butterfly.

But what to do with my small butterflies?  They may have to remain "Two-Button Butterfly" and "Four-Button Butterfly" if I can't come up with anything.

Humongous Psychedelic Teapot

When I started working on a book of tatting patterns with buttons, I just assumed I had plenty of buttons on hand.  But when the time came to test the patterns with larger threads, I was surprised to discover how few large buttons I actually had.  Not to mention how little good quality size 10 thread.  Going shopping was out of question this weekend, so I stirred and stirred through my buttons until I found a handful about the same size.  Worked up in size 10 thread, it came to 6 3/4 inches across.  I thought it was garish, if not scary at first, but I think it is growing on me.

Things are looking good right now to have the book finished in early September.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.

By the way, I am no longer getting email notifications when there are comments awaiting moderation.  I don't know if that's a Blogger thing or a Yahoo mail thing.  I try to remember to check, but sometimes I forget.