#11 of 25 Motif Challenge

First off I believe I owe YOU a huge

"I'm "

I haven't blogged in over a month. I haven't done anything exciting, tatting wise, although I had some fun making fabric postcard. I have been very busy but sadly not with new tatting. I did finished some tatting UFOs, and have recreated some previous works, but nothing worth blogging about.

Here is the only exciting tatting I've done in weeks.

It is the Heart Frame from Tatting Hearts by Teri Dusenbury. I did find one error in the pattern and had to start the piece over, I didn't have enough of the original thread to cut out and redo, so I had to start the piece from the beginning, using a different thread. It is a repetitive pattern, so by the time I restarted it I had the pattern pretty much down pat. I made it using a dark red HDT, size 30, hand dyed by Yarnplayer (Marilee), "A solid from the "Roses" colorway."

Our daughter asked me to make her the Heart Catcher from the same book. I'm not sure how to do the "stacked butterfly" so I'm working on that first, wish me luck. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Speaking of wish me luck........... Lace Lovin' Librarian - Diane and I are doing the T.A.T. Program, apprentice level, together. We both decided there is no pressure to hurry thru it, but doing it with a friend we should be able to keep each other motivated thru out the process. We have finished the first piece and are working on descriptions to go with it. We have a goal of working on the second project by the end of August, maybe even have it finished. See what I mean, no hurry :-), there are to many other fun things we want to do also.

Hopefully it doesn't take a month for you to see my work again :-)

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

#10 of 25 Motif Challenge

JAB is finally Done!

"Triangle Motif Doily"

After weeks of working on this (just because there hasn't been any time) I finally have it finished. It is from a Workbasket magazine that my neighbor shared with me, from the June '74 issue to be exact. She had quite a few that she let me look thru; I did get some really cool patterns. To bad there isn't a magazine like that any more. (There is no author listed to give credit to.)

This is done using Marilee, Yarnplayer's size 30 HTD, called "Blue Green Pastel". Because I had so many issues with it, I used a whole skein of thread. There is no way it should have taken that much thread! It is 4 1/2" across.

It truly was a painful process to create, but only because my mind has been on so many personal issues that I kept making mistakes. It really was such a super easy fun pattern to do. In fact yesterday my husband and I had to go on a road trip, so I took size 80 thread along and started it again. Wait until you guys see it in size 80, it is going to be georgous!!!

Off to get ready for work.

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

Just A Bit - JAB

I enjoy when fellow bloggers show me just a bit - jab- of what they are currently working on. So here is my jab.

It will be the most time consuming piece I've done to date, and I'll explain why ...... I mean it is by no means something huge, like Clyde's heriloom piece (check out his progress, I'm in awe) but it has taken up all of my "spare time" for about 2 weeks. Of course that's not saying much since the gym litterly takes up 2+ hours of my free time each time I go, but I figure if my dh wants me to waste my precious time going to the gym then let the house work pile up :-)

Anyway back to what this is really about, tatting and why this will be my most time consuming piece...........

So I decided I would test tat part of this in plain white thread before I trusted myself to use my good HDT. I found I was able to understand the pattern and the test portion came out perfectly. Okay good onto the fun thread. Well wouldn't you know after a couple days of tatting, I found I messed up the pattern ....... at the beginning! Now this wasn't a cut out and try to salvage days of work type of mess up, it was consistantly doing it wrong mess up. I was so mad at myself that I ended up just throwing the piece away. I tried to calm myself and started the piece over. A couple of days later I became concerned that I may not have enough of this particular HDT left and what if I ran out????, so I took it out of the grabage (thankfully it was in my craft room garbage and no food or anything like that goes in there) and reverse tatted (sounds better than untatted, right?) as much as I could in order to be able to reuse the thread. Now how stupid is that?!?!? I know I know it was a ton of work to reverse tat it all, but the thread is sooo beautiful I hated to waste it!!

Oh and did you see that Handy Hands Tatting is having 15% off any order placed now thru Monday May 28th, Memorial Day? The coupon code is 528. If you're one of their newsletter subscribers be sure to use the free shipping code also. I thought the shipping coupon could only be used once and of course I used it right away, so I'd trashed that info. However Barb was nice enough to send it to me again. Thank you, Barb! I won't include the free shipping code here because it's not fair, but by all means use that 15% off. I'm all about books for this order. I've got to get Tatting Patterns by Lyn Morton and Tatting With Visual Patterns By Mary Konior. I'm also thinking about getting Tatting The GR-8 Self Closing Mock Ring by The Shuttle Brothers. Is there any other ones that you recommend?

Okay enough babbling for now.

Happy Tatting!

Bonnie

#9 of 25 Motif Challenge

So much to blog about today.

Thank You to everyone who commented in my previous blog where I asked is the join the first half of the ds, how to hid new threads added during a project and hiding the tails. I want to make sure I am doing everything exactly right and sometimes I second guess myself. So again Thank You to everyone.

Yesterday my sister, Anita, showed me Google Reader. I have been checking people's blogs 2 or 3 times a day (I'm not a stalker I promise, :-), I'm just afraid of missing something!) What Google Reader does is it lets me know when a new post has been added to everyone's blogs. It is going to save me hours at the computer, :-) . Seriously if you aren't familiar with this or a program like it I highly recommend it.

Also yesterday I spent a large portion of the day making jam. It was a rainy day here in Western NY, so standing over the stove wasn't so bad. I got alot accomplished though, I made a batch each of Strawberry and Raspberry Rhubarb jams. Today I will finish up the jam for this year and make a batch of Cherry Rhubarb. We could NEVER eat that much jam, so I really make it all with the intentions of giving most of it away. Although it never fails that before next Rhubarb season I will have given so much away that we go quite a while with out any until I can make more.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to start Jane's TIAS3 yesterday. But I will do it today.

Lastly here is #9 of my 25 Motif Challenge.


This pattern is called "Heart's Desire" by Susan K. Fuller. The pattern can be found here. I made this for my friend Rose's birthday and tacked it onto the front of a blank card to use as her birthday card. I thought it only fitting to use Yarnplayer's size 30 "Roses" HDT. I first saw this motif on TattingChic's blog.

I would like to continue to invite everyone to comment on my previous blog "Tatting Question". I am very interested to hear how YOU tat.

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

#7 of 25 Motif Challenge

To the right is the finished bookmark I showed a teaser of when I blogged on April 2nd about my new shuttle I received from Sherry. I must tell you it is a dream to work with!

The pattern is from Kersit, and is called Floral. I used Marilee's size 30 Deep Ocean HDT. I had a hard time getting this piece to photograph well and I'm still not happy with it, but hopefully you get the idea. And I had to include the shuttle for anyone who may have missed it the first time around.

And now .............................

introducing my second Sherry shuttle purchase. This time it is a pic shuttle.

I used it to make this bookmark. The pattern is called Heart of the Butterfly by Irene Woo. (again I must repeat what I originally wrote, "Although I made it from a picture and didn't have her pattern, so I'm sure the the stitches probably aren't the exact same as Irene's") This was made using Marilee's size 30 Peace HDT . I have done this motif many times in the past and really enjoy it. I made one for my sister Anita for her birthday, and wanted to make one for our other sister, Nancy, for her bday as well. Actually both of these pieces will go to her. Nancy's bday is April 19th, and since I live in NY and she lives in Boise ID, I better get these in the mail on Monday.

These 2 shuttles are great works of art. I enjoy using them. I do feel that as with all great works of art they should have names, though. I hesitate to put more pressure on you right now, Sherry, but would you do the honors of naming my shuttles at some point in the future? Days, weeks, months from now I don't care when. I just feel that works of art should be named by their creator. Thank you.

I am not considering this second piece as another motif for the 25 Motif Challenge, as I have made it a number of times before.

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

#3 for 25 Motif Challenge

True to my word, I worked on a project using my HDT. The pattern is "Celtic Flower" from Celtic Tatting by Rozella F Linden.

The HDT is from Marilee's "Peace" HDT batch. It is done in size 30. I used a small portion of a skein of "Peace" and since I had to redo the second round (the long peach colored spikes in the middle) I used almost all of a skein of "Peach". Also I didn't leave the beginning picots on round one (the multi color) long enough, which then meant the final rows of that round weren't .......... I guess I'll say .... high enough, so I had to slightly modify the third/final round (the final peach.) I felt the directions were lacking for that final round, I had to untat in order to get the over/under celtic weave working. It didn't explain that in the directions, although it was reflected in the picture, which I missed because I was to busy reading the directions, go figure. LOL. Regardless I think it turned out pretty good.

I feel bad that I missed out on Jane's Tat It And See. I started it but got worried when I came to the first split ring (SR). I know what a SR is but haven't practiced it enough to put it into a project. I didn't want to start off with messing up the project right off the bat. So this week I am going to spend practicing the SR and the SCMR (self closing mock ring.) I hope to have that down by the end of the week. I'm sure the Tat It And See was alot of work, but I hope Jane does another one. It looks like everyone had alot of fun and I'd like to be in on it. As your aware I haven't been tatting long, but I can already tell how much time Jane spends helping out the tatting world, just check out her pattern page. Thank you, Jane.

Please allow me to say unless something wonderful happens in my tatting world during the week, I am only going to update my blog on the weekends.

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

#2 for 25 Motif Challenge - Flower Paperclips

My friend, Marty, asked me how long I'd been tatting, I told her since Sept. But once I started to think about it, I realized that was when I was placed on my teacher's waiting list for class. I checked my calendar and found my first lesson was on November 1, 2007.

That being said, this is Mary Smith's Flower Paperclip pattern that I found on the Internet shortly after I began tatting. I've given at least one to everyone who has shown an interest in my work. Of course I didn't take a picture of a single one before I gave them away, so yesterday when I realized I have no pictures to post this week, I "quickly" made up these two.

In the nature of using my HDT-s the one on the left is Sherry's size 20 "Spring Poppies" and the one on the right is Marilee's size 30 "Roses". (Now do you see why I am addicted to their HDT-s!!) I wanted you to see the original pattern which is the "Spring Poppies". However, in the "Roses" clip, I added the seed beads. I also altered the pattern to include an extra ring at the end which I then wove the other rings around. I'm sorry the extra ring doesn't show up very well in this picture but it does give it a little something extra in the middle.

I am going to count these as #2 of the 25 Motif Challenge.

Happy Tatting,


Bonnie

H.D.T.A.

With a sense of relief, I learned there is a name for my condition. It is H.D.T.A. (Hand Dyed Thread Addicts.) Cylde (AKA The Mad Tatter) explained the condition quite well in his Sat, Jan 19, 2008 and Sun, Jan 13, 2008 posts. I am totally addicted. I rush home from work every day to see what Marilee and Sherry may have listed on Etsy while I was at work. I'd hate to miss out on anything!

I just read Sapna's blog and wow did it hit home. I too am a collector of HDT-s, she wrote..... "I must admit though that I have been saving them for God knows what! I think its time I used them… for only then I can do more justice and buy more." It was like a "dah" moment for me. What good are they if I just gaze at them? I need to create with them and only then can I justify to myself getting more. So I'm making a promise to myself to use at least one of my HDT-s this week.

Happy Tatting,

Bonnie

Hand Dyed Thread - #1 Motif

I am addicted to them, now that I have some I am afraid to use them .... my fear is a couple fold.

First, as Gina suggested in her blog dated Thursday Jan 17, 2008, the color choice can make or break a piece. I do not have enough tatting experience to have mastered the right or wrong of color yet.

Next I fear I will have picked out a pattern that is to advanced for me and I will waste "My Good Thread" which is hand dyed thread from Marilee (Yarnplayer) and Sherry (Lady Shuttlemaker) 's Etsy shops. I can tell they each must use a wonderful base thread as it is a dream to work with. (If you haven't treated yourself to at least one of their skeins please do so.) I discovered Etsy about a month ago and since then every day I come home from work and check to see what lovely threads the ladies may have listed while I was at work. I'd hate to miss out on anything! Now to find patterns worthy of My Good Thread.

For my first couple of tatting pieces I did the first one a plan white to make sure I could do it and see how it would look before I ventured into the variegated threads which are my favorite. However then I realized that it is alot of work to do it in white AND do it again in color.

After the bookmark I made for a friend this is the next completed piece I made. As you can see I made the first one in white as a practice piece, it is a size 20 thread. The other one was made using Marilee's Deep Ocean size 30 thread. And I might add that it is the first piece I made where I didn't have to cut and restart the thread.

I did make a variegated teal one to send to my GUF so he could see what I've been up to. It is my pattern of choice right now. It is fun to make and I've really learned to make my picots consitant size. I think I've made 4 or 5 of them now. Everyone I know is going to end up with one.

Sadly I do not know who to give credit to for the pattern as Betty (my teacher) gave me a picture of a finished piece which I looked at it and made my own version of. ****Monday, Jan 21, 2008, Thank you to Sharon for letting me know this pattern is called "Heart of the Butterfly by Irene Woo which was printed in the Official Tat_Chat Pattern Book edited by Georgia Seitz" Although I made it from a picture and didn't have her pattern (so I'm sure the the stitches probably aren't the exact same as Irene's) I'm very pleased to be able to give her credit for a beautiful pattern.****

Even though there is 2 here, I will count this as my first motif for the 25 Motif Challenge.

Happy Tatting,


Bonnie