Lesson learned: Make sure there's enough

You may remember that I won some thread on ebay. It was a lot of size 80 thread which I use mostly for bookmarks, like the one in my last post, and edgings. Winning a batch of partial balls lets me have a wide variety of colours, although not necessarily a lot of thread. Bookmarks don't take a lot of thread so having only partial balls is OK.

I decided since I have a nice palette to work with that I'd add an edging to a hanky. I happened to find a lot of cotton hankies with machine embroidery in the corner and I bought a bunch on them in different colours and designs. It seems that most often I want to make these as bridal gifts so I generally use the hankies with the blue embroidery like the one shown here.

If I can't have plain white on white, blue at least goes along with the "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" tradition. Of course, unless you know ahead of time what the wedding colours are going to be, the lace is best left white.

Consequently, the white drawn thread hankies and the ones with blue embroidery are gone and I still have those in pink, purple and mauve. So I decided that I should just tat matching edgings to some of the others and keep them on hand for quick gifts. (I don't know how it happens, but things just barely get off my shuttles and they're walking out the door, sometimes before I even take a picture.) Anyway, since I had lots of lovely colours to play with I thought I'd just choose a hanky and give it an edging.

This one has a mauve flower with a darker mauve ribbon and mint green leaves. One of the variegated balls of mauve thread was a perfect match, as was the solid green. I filled my shuttle and merrily tatted away. Guess what? You don't have to guess do you? You know when I started out talking about partial balls of thread, what was inevitably coming.

I ran out of the variegated thread half way down the last side. (Why is it always the last side? Couldn't it happen half way through?) Fortunately in the other batch of partial threads there was another ball of the same dye lot that I won. Good thing too, because the thread was vintage Lily brand which isn't being made any more and the balls of DMC and Coats aren't really a match for it.

At any rate, here is the finished hanky using my Hearts and Flower edging and I have a wee giftie  ready if I need it.

NOTE TO SELF: Next time you make a hanky edging make sure you have enough thread before you start!