Friday, November 10, 2023

Tatting commission delivered

If you remember, I mentioned in an earlier post that a colleague had asked me to make her two tatted wings and two flower clusters in tatting. Here is that post. It has indeed been so long, that I've forgotten what I'd written.

Well, after several weeks, I showed her my prototypes. She liked them and off I went to make them for her. Here they are, in pearl cotton (mostly):

 

They are pair of wings from Wanda's knotty thoughts and two blossoms by Muskaan).

I have to say that Frivole's snowflake test tatting has taught me how to make an unflipped chain and this was very useful for the wings. I made each of them with a shuttle and ball.

The blossoms were a real delight to tat. I really liked the simple patterns and the colours were so cheery!

I did them all in one weekend (overall 8 hours), hoping to catch up with my colleague the next week, but sadly we only saw each other a few weeks later, on this Wednesday. l gave her the lace and I'm glad to say she really liked them. She even asked me for two more blossoms in slightly different colours.

My wrist has been a bit bad the past few days with tendonitis (I blame crocheting hehe), so I will get to it when I'm sure I've recovered enough.

I'll come back with more pictures when I'm done.

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Test tatting Holly Snowflake

I know I have been talking about crocheting, but this week I've been tatting.

One of the projects that have kept me busy was test tatting Frivole's new Holly Snowflake pattern. Since she has posted my photo too, I will show it as well. Of course, the ends are now all hidden away.

It's looking frosty in blue

It was my first time test tatting. I must say it was interesting following written instructions to the letter and working in a regular way. Maybe you don't know, but I usually go by the diagrams and I have my own version of some of the joins. But this was no time to go rogue.

I really enjoyed making the snowflake. I learned a few things that I wasn't too familiar with. Coincidentally, one of the techniques helped me in my next tatting project. And I hope my observations were useful to Frivole in turn.

What I like is that the inspiration was a real snowflake and the tatted one really did end up looking quite similar to it. I'd say definitely check it out.

Saturday, October 7, 2023

Planning a crocheted skirt

I've been watching a very interesting series of videos on Youtube, called Vintage mystery crochet. A lady has some "anonymised" crochet patterns from vintage books, works them based only on the written instructions, then guesses what they could be. It's loads of fun and reminds me of the TIAS that Jane Eborall was hosting (which I always missed, to my shame) and got my fingers itching for a crochet hook.

I have a few crochet works in progress from some years ago that I got stumped on and would like to either finish or frog and start over.

One of these is a skirt in fine yarn. Which is all fine and dandy, but I gave myself the extra challenge of using variegated yarn, so not any pattern or stitch will look good. After searching high and low for patterns and stitches, I've decided to try and design it myself. It's funny, since with tatting I prefer following a pattern, but with crochet I've been mostly making most of it up as I went along. I guess I made a lot of wearables, so I personalised them a lot. And the easy "undo" feature of crochet lends itself to easy designing.

Here is my idea for the skirt so far:

The top around the waist will be unjoined rows with light invisible increase (random increase points) until the hip widest point. I would later on add a button hole tab and buttons by working on the edge of the slit.

Then I would work in the round, with regular increases, depending on the initial row length. The increases would create a whirl, which could be accented with a special stitch. Or I could go for an invisible increase.

Lacier bits can be incorporated when the skirt is long enough: open gaps or special stitches next to the increases or within the rows.

I was also thinking of adding some tatting somewhere on the edge, if I find an edging idea that fits.

I'd say that's a good plan for a start.

Now, years ago, I made a few rows, but I'm not happy with the increases, so I will frog most of it.

According to my notes, I was working one of my favourite stitches at that time, one loop single crochet. I went with single crochet because I wanted a tight stitch, so maybe I could wear this without s slip. We'll see. And the one loop only (in this case front) would create an interesting pattern in the fabric. In fact, I really like the way the yarn changes show up on it. You can see it in the main block in the pictures below.

I thought however to experiment with other stitches too, maybe I'd like others more.

I tried the moss/linen stitch. It looked interesting from the online pictures, but it's not as nice as my original idea. Plus my tension was a bit wonky, sorry about that. Dishwasher detergent makes my hands slippery. Well, one must wash dishes though! Crocheting and tatting won't exempt me from it.

Moss/linen stitch at the top 3 rows

The other idea was regular single crochet. But, as you can see, one side is a bit bland, while the other barely shows the colour in some rows.

Regular single crochet side one: kind of meh

Regular single crochet side 2: where did the colours go?

So I guess my first idea is my favourite one. What do you know! Now it's time to frog and measure and crochet and measure and... I foresee lots of frogging in my future! Heh.

Friday, October 6, 2023

Luggage tag, but not quite

I'm always glad when I can marry off any of my little bits and ends of lace. Even better when they get a good purpose.

Three such pieces ended up on mom's luggage today. She wanted a sure way of identifying her trolley and asked me for some of my tatted lace. She chose two almost identical coaster centres that never made it into coasters because of a wrong stitch count. She also had a brooch I had given her a couple of years back that was bright and visible.

I attached the brooch by its needle, but it wasn't secure enough apart from that, so she asked me to sew in the edges too. I did, but the brooch back was standing off too much, so, after a bit of wiggling, I convinced it to come off through a gap in the lace, without having to undo my fresh stitches.

My tool of choice today was the curved needle, since a straight one would have been too difficult to get in and out of the tough bag facing from just one side. It worked like a charm. And with the help of my trusted pliers, the work was quick and painless. It's great to have good tools!

Here is my little handywork. I think it looks quite jolly. Mom sure likes it. My lace is once more going places, hehe!



Tuesday, October 3, 2023

A little wing and flower commission

I have a commission, yay! Why all the excitement? Well, few people in my circle of friends and family care about the fact that I tat and crochet and as such they don't rush in with requests. I'm glad when I can help with the odd garment repair (of course I sew too), but I'd like to make more interesting things as well.

And I'm sure a lot of crafty people have noticed that a surprise hand-made gift will not always be appreciated or used much. So I am always happy when someone requests something. I also suck at deciding on gifts.

One of my colleagues caught wind of my tatting skills and has asked if I could make her a few small pieces to sew onto a jacket. She chose a few cute patterns (a pair of wings from Wanda's knotty thoughts and two blossoms by Muskaan). She also chose some pearl cotton threads, which are very fine, but which I had in lots of pretty colours.

I set about to tat a couple of mock-ups in pearl cotton to let her get a feel for the actual size. I was tired when I made the wing, so I made one inner ring too few, but it's still going to be ok for a mock-up. I actually hid the ends and blocked the white blossom, since I might use it for something anyway. It certainly came out alright.

 


Now, to take these to work with me to show her and hopefully it will be a good start on my little commission project.