The picture in my head is nothing like the tatting in my hand.

I had this idea to take a 3D flower, just use part of it and add a bead in the centre. The purpose of this exercise is to create a necklace instead of a bookmark or hanky for my sister whose birthday is coming up. I have FIVE sisters, but this one shares my birthday and while none of the family bothers much with sending birthday cards and the like, this one sister does. And we share the same birthday so it's really hard for me to forget hers.  No, we aren't twins. Mom just happened to hit the same day 15 years apart. If you think that is novel, one brother was born on New Year's day and one brother was born on Christmas day. I think Mom was trying for Easter with Sis and I. For anyone who's keeping count, we used to have 11of us around the table. Mom, Dad, 3 boys, 6 girls.

Anyway I had this idea, but when I use just part of the design, I lose the central part that used to hold it all together. I started off with the large bead in the centre of a ring, which was wonderful, except that I needed to throw rings off the ring which was more problematic. So I switched to a SCMR with a large half inch bead in the centre, which worked but was very awkward to add the bead and close the ring. Once that part was done the big bead got in the way while tatting and to further complicate matters I did the rings including the SCMR in a solid colour with a variegated thread around the outside.

I have maintained some of the 3D effect even though changing the stitch count on the centre section flattened it out some. I opted for a larger flower shape in the middle and was going to end up with an upward facing point along the top edge or  with the side flowers pulled in toward the middle, which is what I finally decided on. I was envisioning a narrow tatted band with the flowers hanging off the middle of it with something nice and decorative bringing it all together.

What I have is 3 flower shapes that sit on top of one another if I stretch it out straight, or the side rings on the ends of a U shaped curve. I was thinking of hanging the flowers from a row of split rings, but I didn't like how chunky that looked. I switched to a plain chain, but that didn't look like anything. So I've decided I need to tat across the top of the U shape, add a bit that hangs down in the U and maybe a short chain into some graduated split rings. Or something. I need to get this done and mailed in the next day or so. It might be faster to tat a hanky edging. Or not.

This is SO NOT what I was picturing.

Pardon the crappy picture, may camera battery is dying.