Sea Shell Pattern available on my web site

I noticed on Facebook that people were looking for the pattern for the Sea Shell I designed in 2008.

I wanted a recognizable sea shell and doodled around until I found a suitable design. In one rendition I was doing joins in between doublestitches because the rings had to be so tiny. Itsy bitsy rings and some really fiddly work, but it looks like a shell and it still holds it's concave shape although you could block the life out of it to make it lie flat. It's designed to cup just a tiny bit. Anyway, when I saw folks wanted it, I posted it to my web site. It's on my web site now at http://www.rsbriggs.com/ in the Free Patterns at the bottom of the page.

Note: Click on the Legend link on the right for an explanation of the icons used in the pattern.

Another Snowflake pattern for you

I did this necklace with sequins ages ago and having no purpose for it, it's been hanging off my mirror ever since. I like the look of it and wondered about turning it into a snowflake. The first issue is that the medallion has a 4 sided base and a snowflake has 6 points. Somehow you need to go from tatting multiples of 4 to something divisible by 6. The quick way of doing this is simple multiplication 4x6 gives 24, but who wants to do 24 repeats for a simple little snowflake? Certainly not me. Of course half of that is 12 which just happens to be nicely divisible by both 4 and 6.

The second row of the medallion has 3 sequins on each of 4 sides along with a ring joined to the base of the ring on the first row. I figured it would be simple to just replace the sequins with rings, but keeping to the same design would have resulted in 4 rings and 4 chains on each side or a total of 16 and not the 12 I wanted. So, instead, I went with 3 rings on a side which doesn't frame the centre in the same way, but it works.

Since I was trying to replace the sequins with rings, I used rings of 5-5-5-5 which are kind of large, but the size and numbers worked.

Once I had my 12 outward facing rings, I needed to pare them down to six and create a point for each arm of the snowflake. To keep it simple I just went with larger 6-6-6-6 rings in a 4 ring grouping and an outward facing ring for the point.

The finished snowflake is 4.5 inches point to point done in size 20 thread. It's large open and not very frilly, but I think I like it anyway. Going with smaller rings would make it more petite and delicate looking and of course adding a lot more picots would make it more frilly. Anyway, here is the pattern for you to enjoy.

Snowflakes for Christmas

At this time of year we start to see all of the tatted lovelies that people use to adorn their trees. We oooh and ahhh over all of the amazing trees decked in lace. Some of them are pristine white lace on dark evergreen for a dramatic tree. Some of them are a fun collection of snowflakes, candy canes, and wreaths. Some of them are white trees festooned with a kaleidoscope of vibrate colours. Whatever they are, we all come away from viewing them wishing that our own trees were as covered in lace and that can be discouraging.

If you have just learned to tat, or you don't have a lot of time to devote to your tatting, it can be daunting to make dozens of tatted gems for your tree. Rather than get overwhelmed, why not just relax and determine to tat one snowflake or other project per month. You can fit in one small design a month, even if you're busy.

Here's a simple design with 360 stitches. Over a month, that's about 12 stitches a day. You can manage 12 stitches in a day. Really. You can. It may not be a spectacular design, but it's easy and it will get you started on your own tree full of lace. One a month and by next year at this time, you'll have a dozen for your tree. A dozen is a respectable start to a tree full of lace.

Just so that you can make your own snowflake, here is the pattern.

Of course, this is a simple design and maybe you'd like something a little more challenging, like this:

This is a little more complex, but neither of these designs are particularly difficult and both of them will give you a start on your own tree full of lace.

As I get time and inclination, I'll upload some more snowflakes for you to try. Who knows, maybe you can fill your tree with snowflakes for this Christmas.

Legend

I received an email today that has prompted me to do some tidying up. The email was an inquiry into the symbols that precede the crocus pattern. A long time ago when I started writing patterns, I wanted to let people know at a glance what they were getting in to. I have seen patterns labeled beginner, intermediate or advanced, yet I couldn't see any rhyme or reason for the labelling. Other patterns were labeled difficult because of the presence of split rings or split chains. To my way of thinking, if a pattern calls for a technique you can't do, you can't complete it no matter how easy or difficult the design.


So when I began designing I designated the pattern easy, takes concentration, or "throw the shuttles across the room". I've only ever designed 2 of the latter. I also mark the pattern to show which techniques they require. That way, a tatter knows at the outset what to expect. A catalog of these symbols and what they mean is printed at the front of each of my publications. I haven't included a description of what they mean in quite some time, so I've decided to put the information here, label it and then in future I can just refer to the label so that people don't have to wonder, "What do those odd symbols mean?".


Here's the symbols, or most of them.

The first one shouldn't be any surprise, it's an easy pattern. The second one means the pattern requires concentration; it's not a 'tat in front of the TV' design. The missing, "throw the shuttle across the room symbol is a 12 point star because you have to be a star to tat it, but I don't do many of those. That's the basic, easy to difficult symbols.

The next 2 symbols are ovoid shapes kind of like what a shuttle looks like. I guess it's no surprise that they mean there are shuttles in use. One symbol, one shuttle, 2 symbols, 2 shuttles, 3 symbols, 3 shuttles. (Yes you can occasionally use more than 2 shuttles.). The symbol beside it that kind of looks like a square with diagonal lines, also kind of looks like a ball of thread. That's because some patterns use a shuttle and ball of thread. I think it's better to know at the outset if you NEED a second shuttle, before you get in to the pattern and realize that things would have been much easier with 2 shuttles wound CTM. On the other hand, you can save a lot of precious HDT if you don't unnecessarily wind a second shuttle. Those are the, this is what I need to do this pattern symbols. If a pattern is easier to do with a double bobbin shuttle, the shuttle symbol will have 2 little circles on it.


The rest of the symbols refer to techniques. The circle with a line through it refers to split rings. Just like the ring is made part with one shuttle and part with the other. In earlier patterns I marked the ring with a line through it where the split occurred, but in later patterns I also shaded the section done with shuttle 2 as it seemed to help some people follow the pattern more easily.


Two parallel lines are just an indication of mock picots. Mock picots are such a non-entity. You make a picot but a mock picot just happens, If you do a row of split rings, you can't, NOT make mock picots. They're just a by product of doing the last thing and the next thing, but again it helps some people to know that they are there.


The figure 8 on it's side, aka the symbol for infinity, represents working CTM because like infinity, there aren't any ends.

The last symbol of linked chains is a symbol I use for split chains. In the pattern itself I show the chain with two arrows facing each other at the point where the chain is split. That shows the tatter to work the first part of the chain up to the arrowhead and then work the second part of the chain from the opposite direction back to meet it.


If there is cluny tatting I show a cluny leaf shape with lines across it. In the pattern I show the same symbol where the cluny appears with the number of wraps superimposed.


It's really all very logical and it helps users to know what they are getting into and to follow the pattern more easily. Doing a newsletter for 6 years and getting a lot of good feedback, has helped my develop better drawings that are easier to follow.

Now that I have explained my little legend, I've also gone through the blog and tagged all of the patterns. Just clicking on the Pattern tag should bring up all of the designs available on the blog.