Introducing the flying pig!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is the tatted flying pig!

I have had Jane Eborall's flying pig on my wish list ever since I found out it existed. Which was shortly after learning how to needle tat, a few years ago. It was such a whimsical thing to make!

I kept putting it off though, wanting to learn and get more experience first. Some of the techniques were almost daunting. Split ring? Lock join? Reverse work? Oh wait, that one I knew. There is also a version with onion rings. I didn't even open that one, the title alone stopped me.

After getting a bit more comfortable with shuttle tatting and some of the intermediate techniques, I decided to give it a go. I didn't like onion rings much, so I chose the alternative pattern.

Let me make a little aside here. I am truly amazed by Jane's patterns and I'm sure I will make more in the future. So far I have made the turtle (as a pair of earrings).

I also tweaked the piggie a little to my own taste. I only used Catherine wheel joins (because I seem to have a lock join phobia), made the ear as a thrown ring (with a turned side, like the turtle flippers), used self-closing mock rings for the legs instead of split rings and added or removed a double stitch here and there. And I tried to make a dead-end chain for the tail without proper instructions (my phone was running out of battery, no time for research). I also completely remade the wings...

The leg as self-closing mock ring with a thrown ring off it. The loop is formed by the core shuttle.

Looks a bit naked... Let's give it some wings

I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I even had the perfect shade of baby pink. I asked my friends what they thought it was and they guessed it was a pig, so pig accomplished!

I then designed the wings. They are very simple. I will put the instructions at the end of the post if anyone cares to try them.

After it was all done, of course we had to take photos. And since it was supposed to be a flying piggie, we tried to make it look like it was flying. We ended up filming it... while it was flying downwards. Here it is in slow motion, with extra sound effects (sadly, the pig is not in focus):

We really had a blast taking photos of the piggie and tossing it around. It was a flying pig, after all!

The piggie in the grass photographed by my husband.

In the end, I gave the piggie away to one of my friends. They said they would make another video starring the little flying oinker. I will make another one for myself. I definitely need one somewhere on my desk at work.

PS. Here are the notes for one wing. This is for the right wing. For making the left wing, work everything backwards.

Two shuttles wound continuously.

Start SCMR

SCMR 3

R1 3-2-1

SCMR 2

R2 1+(join to p2 of R1)3-3-3

SCMR 2

R3 1+(join to p3 of R2)5-6

SCMR 6

End SCMR

I connected the wings together by passing the two threads through picots in the pig's body instead of cutting and hiding the ends. I had enough thread left to make the second wing.