Where did I go wrong? Answer: Everywhere.

See this mess? It's enough to make you throw your shuttles across the room. Of course after you've screamed a little in frustration you have to go collect the shuttles and start fixing. Since we were talking about designing previously. I thought you'd like to see what an elegant piece of tatting looks like in process.


This picture shows both the left and the right side of a multi motif project that I've been working on. Since this will be one of those designs that's going into the newsletter I don't want to show it all right now as it will spoil the surprise. Both sides are supposed to be the same and as you can see they're not. See all those threads hanging off? They're the bits where I started over again several times.

The motif is a standard snowflake shape with 6 points. To make it into the ---- project it needs to have a straight side. When you join six pointed snowflake shapes together you have big gaps in the dip between points. While maintaining the design elements of the motif I need to fill in the gap and build the whole thing up to a straight edge. Then I need to make a somewhat solid band along the straight edge.

I worked one side the way I thought it would look good, remembering to add picots at strategic points, outward facing rings, where I needed them and got into the second pattern repeat of the first row. That's where I decided to do something different, that I thought would look better. It did, so I just carried on. I knew I'd have to fix the first bit before I did the next row but, hey that's the way it goes when you're designing on the fly.


When I got to the other end I had to invent a different arrangement for the edge of row one. I liked the second variation better so all I had to do was cut off the beginning of row one and make it the same. No problem I'd just fix that part when I got row 2 done. Six split rings into row 2 I realized that the long chain I had begun the row with wasn't going to work right.


AGAIN, I changed what I was doing and here I am at the point of tatting row 2 into row 1 in places where this part of row 1 doesn't have places. I've already cut off part of row 1 on the left and this is where I need to retro tat a split ring or 2, some chain and a couple of regular rings.

Fortunately the end on the right I only have to cut out the chain and replace it with 2 rings and 2 chains. Except that, as this is where row 1 turns and becomes row 2 I kind of think I'd like to replace the whole section, just so there aren't a bzillion ends all hidden in that one chain. Chains are easy to retro tat, but they're harder to hide ends in. Not normal ends, you understand, but the 40,000 ends you have when you need to cut out multiple bits because you were just winging it as you designed and it didn't quite work.

Stay tuned for the fixed version.

How to Tat

I have how to tat demos on my web site which were done when the internet was new and it was important for files to be small. There have been other videos done since, but I don't think any of them have been filmed from the tatter's point of view.

I frequently receive e-mail from people asking for help and often the problem is that they haven't wrapped the thread around their hand properly. Having written the same thing a bunch of times, I now keep a spare How to Tat draft e-mail. So for your pleasure and benefit, here are detailed instructions that should really de-mystify the process.

HOW TO TAT
There are several different methods of shuttle tatting, some of which are, the Riego method, the loop method and the traditional method. Each of these methods uses different motions to create the doublestitch that is used in all tatting. That can make it very confusing to a novice using more than one set ofreference material. The following instructions arefor the traditional method.

Double stitches (DS) are used to form rings (R)and chains (CH) and it is easiest to learn how to form the double stitches when working with 2 contrasting colours of size 10 thread. For example; red and white. Fill a shuttle with white thread, then knot the end of the white thread together with the ball of red thread.

Pinch the knot between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. Take the red thread up and over the back of the fingers of the left hand, spreading the fingers a little, then secure the thread by wrapping it several times around the left baby finger. All of the action happens on the stretch of thread between the forefinger and middle finger of the left hand. So make sure there is enough room for the shuttle to pass between those 2 fingers. Let's call this part ofthe red thread the "action" thread.

Now take the shuttle in the right hand and with the hook, point or pick pointing forward, place the thumb on the bottom and the forefinger or first 2 fingers of the right hand on the top. Use the last 3 fingers of the right hand to hold the shuttle thread up and out of the way when forming the first half of the doublestitch.

The shuttle is used to manoeuvre the shuttle thread around the "action" thread that is over the left hand. For the first half of the doublestitch, lift the shuttle thread up and out of the way. Spread the fingers of the left hand to keep the red thread tight. Slide the shuttle under the "action" thread.Don't let go of the shuttle, just let the red thread slip between the shuttle and the fingers, off the back of the shuttle and then pull the shuttle back out, letting the thread slip between the shuttle and the thumb.

Note that the shuttle is below both the shuttle thread and the "action" thread when you slide it under, but between the threads when you slide the shuttle out. That forms the first half of the stitch using the white shuttle thread.

Now to flip the stitch over to the red thread relax the left hand and pull the shuttle straight out to the right keeping the white thread tight. Alternating which thread is being held tight is what flips the stitch. Then extend the fingers of the left hand again to tighten the red thread and use the middle finger of the left hand to slide the first half of the stitch over until it's right against the knot that you are pinching. That's the first half done.

For the second half of the stitch again keep the red thread tight. Let the shuttle thread hang down in front of the "action" thread. Take the shuttle OVER the "action" thread and slide it butt end first underthe "action" thread and let the red thread slip between the shuttle and the forefinger.

Note that the shuttle is above both the shuttle thread and the "action" thread as you go over it, but between the threads as you pull the shuttle out. Again relax the fingers of the left hand and pull the shuttle straight out to the right. Keep the white shuttle thread tight, then extend the fingers of the left hand again using the middle finger to slide the second half of the stitch against the first half.That's the doublestitch completed.

Repeat until you have the specified number of stitches completed. You will see that all of the stitches are red - the colour of the thread over the back of the left hand. You can tell immediately that any stitches which are not red are not flipped.

Picots are created simply by leaving a little extra thread between stitches. When the stitches are slid together the extra thread makes a loop that is a picot. The more thread between the stitches, the bigger and lacier the picot will be.

Chains are created using both a shuttle thread and a chain or ball thread. Rings are created using only the shuttle thread. To tat a ring pinch the end of the shuttle thread. Wrap the thread up over the back of the fingers of the left hand as you did for the chain, but instead of winding it around the baby finger, bring the thread across the palm and pinch it again. You will have a complete circle around the fingers when tatting a ring. The formation of the stitches is identical to the chain. When you have completed the ring pull on the shuttle thread and the ring should slide closed. If the ring doesn't close then one or more stitches aren't flipped.

Usually you reverse work - turn the work upside down - when you switch from rings to chains and from chains to ring.

Rings and chains are joined to one another through the picots. Shuttles that have a hook on the front are more efficient for joins. Insert the hook into the picot and pull up a loop of "working" thread, then slide the shuttle through the loop. Use the fingers of the left hand to pull the loop back down trapping the shuttle thread underneath. Make sure that the shuttle thread still slides after the join. It is easier to check as you are working than to have to un-tat.

Older patterns are written in long form but newer patterns use visual diagrams where the circles or ovals represent rings, the arced lines represent chains and the short little lines or sometimes tiny loops represent picots. A join is indicated by a short line touching any two parts like two rings or two chains. The numbers shown around the outside of a ring represent the number of doublestitches to be tatted for each section of the ring.

For example a visual diagram of a ring might show an oval with a short line on each side and one on the top. If there was a number 7 above and another 7 below the short line on the left and two more 7's on the left. You would tat 7 doublestitches, leave a picot space, doing that 3 times then tat 7 more doublestitches before pulling on the shuttle thread to close the ring. The number of doublestitches required for each segment of a chain is usually shown alongside the chain.

Sometimes three rings are joined together forming a cloverleaf or trefoil. To form a cloverleaf, tat the first ring, do not reverse work. Tat the second ring, starting it as close to the first ring as possible leaving no gaps. Join it to the side of the first ring. Do not reverse work and tat the third ring close to the previous ring again joining the rings at the side. After all three rings are completed, reverse work to tat the chain.

A good diagram should let you visualize the finished lace even if you don't have a picture, but a picture always helps.

Floral Tatting

Several years ago I self published a book called Transitions in Tatting from Flat to Floral which is no longer in print. I'm thinking about re-printing just the floral part of the book as people keep asking me for flower patterns. The front cover shows you the flowers.

My criteria for these flowers was that they had to be life size, and they had to be constructed in such a way that wire wasn't needed for the flower to hold it's shape. The purple orchid on the upper right was tatted by Sue Hanson and was returned to her after the photo was taken. All of the other flowers have been sitting in the vase exactly like the picture since 2000 when the book was published. None of them have wilted yet!

The little white flower in the middle is a

Daisy

Then counter clockwise from the bottom left

Stargazer Lily

Daffodil

Red Carnation

Purple Tulip

White Carnation

Purple Cattleya Orchid

Daffodil

Delphinium

Orchid done in Purple Mauve and White

Red Tulip

Also included were Leaves for the Tulip and Daffodil and an English Ivy.

The designs were made especially for use in bridal bouquets and wedding veils.

I have the hard copy that I could have photocopied, but I'm not sure about the original drawings. In the course of going through several computer upgrades and changing hard drives 4 times I'm not sure if the old files are still intact. Having the hard copy to work from I could probably re-draw the flowers so that I could make them available again. Anyone interested in a book of flowers?

Blueberry? How about Cranberry Tea?

Having experimented with some left over cranberry sauce, I thought I'd try out some blueberry jam and see how blue it left the lace. The thread ends are more blue than the lace is. The lace is almost the same colour as the cranberry sample. How weird is that? Of course all of the additives made to the jam might be responsible for the reddish purple colour. Or maybe blueberry really is red!!!???

Notice the rings attached to the central ring? See that one of them is larger than the others? When I'm designing something new I start with a stitch count I think will work. If it doesn't I have the choice of starting again, or correcting the stitch count and continuing. If it's a scrap bit like this, I just keep going because I know it's going to have to be done over again anyway. Sometimes, you just need to do a test piece.

I made a double batch of cranberry sauce this year. Half of it was meant to go with the turkey and the other half formed the base for orange cranberry raisin filling for some Christmas cookies. I made the sauce with orange juice instead of water and that may have affected both the overall colour and the staying power of the cranberry colour. I had a lot of cranberry sauce and filling left over so I did some more experimenting.

I have done some butterflies that will be added to a plain T-shirt and one of them got dropped into a cup of tea. Brown isn't really a pretty butterfly colour so I dunked it into some cranberry sauce and mashed the berries into it. Here's Cranberry Tea:

I like it better than tea colour, but I mashed it hard enough to cut the thread. Either I sew it down fixing the break by tacking it in place or I cut out the break and re-do the chain after first matching the cranberry tea colour. Who am I kidding? I'm totally going to sew this mistake down.

Cranberry!

I like to wear plain cotton shirts. They feel good and they're more comfortable when I have "power surges". What I don't like is that:

A. Ladies cotton T's cost more than twice the price of men's.
B. I in variably splash tomato sauce on them.
C. The parrot's claws go right through the fabric poking lots of little holes through the shoulders.

That being the case I either walk around in tattered and stained clothes or I replace my shirts more often than the average woman. Which brings me back to A. So I have been buying a lot of men's T's and adding tatting to them. Since I splash a lot of whatever I'm cooking onto my shirts anyway, I was wondering what it would look like if I used natural dyes on fabric and or tatting.



Want to see Cranberry?





For how very red the fruit is, the lace looks kind of purple. I mashed a couple of berries into this little bit of white tatting then rinsed the residue off and washed the lace in a bit of dish soap. The colour isn't even and while I like how it looks on lace, I'm not sure what it would look like on a shirt. Of course if I ran the cranberry sauce, minus the sugar, through a blender, strained it and then left the shirt soaking in it for a good while I might get a darker and more even colour. Judging by the way the cranberry stains aren't coming out of my clothes even with repeated washings, I can be reasonable sure that this colour won't ever run.

The lace is just a little doodle of something or other I was designing so it was a scrap bit. Now that it's such a pretty colour I'll have to do something with it.

Back to Blogging

I suppose it's typical of the season that people are busy doing lots of seasonal activities and consequently we don't have a lot of time for blogging. I've managed to keep the 25 motif challenge blog reasonably up to date and at long last the November newsletter has been sent out. That's right, here it is in the middle of December and I've only just sent out the newsletter. I usually put lots of Christmas-y patterns in the November newsletter, but I realize that a lot of people like the Christmas theme designs earlier so that they can actually tat them as Christmas gifts. Consequently some of the designs were in the August issue.

Here's a picture of the snowflake I sent out this year with my Christmas cards. Does it remind you of anything? It should, it's another variation of the same snowflake. More stitches on the inner rings and the chains, extra little rings in between the chains and some beads added in, but still the same general idea. Since my last posting I've done over a dozen of these flakes as well as re-tatting the pink doily and various other small snowflakes and earrings. The pattern for these are in the newsletter and those of you who subscribe to it will find it in your in-box.

Now, I'm going to take my aching thumbs and give them a rest, right after I update the challenge page.

More things to do with snowflakes

One of the easiest things you can do with a snowflake is join several of them together. Snowflakes are supposed to have six sides as that just happens to be the natural shape of ice crystals. When you put a grouping of hexagons together in a round shape you use 7 hexagons, one in the middle and one attached to each of the six sides.

Several years ago I needed to create a doily in a hurry. My inspiration was nothing more than I just needed a quick gift. Having crocheted a lot of granny squares, knew that 7 joined hexagons would make a doily and I had 8 different hexagon shapes to choose from. The largest of the 8 designs was Snowflake 4, so it was my obvious choice. I tatted the 7 motives and joined ten together by their points.

That made a nice little grouping, but the motives were very pointy and they didn't have a nice smooth outer edge so the doily looked unfinished. If you have ever tatted a doily, you know that the further from the centre you get the longer it takes to tat a round and I didn't have a lot of time.

The simplest method of bringing it all together was just to tat a row of chain around the circumference of the motives. At the point where 3 motives were joined there were 3 cloverleaves. On the outer edge that meant that there were only 2 cloverleaves, so for continuity I tatted a cloverleaf of matching proportions at that point. Where there was just one cloverleaf, I tatted a single ring and joined them together by a chain.

The chains of the first row were deliberately made long both to save time and to separate the edging from the motives. The less connected it was, the less I had to figure out as far as matching the motif design. I could have worked the edging around each ring of the cloverleaf and followed the outer contour of the motives but it would have taken a lot more tatting and a lot more thinking. As it was, the negative space added a design element and made it easier to work the edging.

The single row had no depth or substance to it. It was just a big floppy chain. Adding the second row with more connecting points made it more solid and gave it shape. When you add an edging to something you want to repeat part of the theme to make it match and look like it belongs. The sparse 2 rows of edging added to the motives is kind of skimpy because I was short of time and had to make this in less than a week, but it still works.

Turning a snowflake into a heart

One of the basic things you need to think about when you are designing something is it's shape. What is the general outline? Is it square? Round? Oblong? A snowflake is mostly round with some points, and the little parts that make up the whole fit together like pieces of a pie with each piece of the pie being a single pattern repeat.

If you want to make a heart, how would you describe the shape? Hearts kind of look like triangles. Some are short and fat and some are tall and skinny, but all of them are wider at the top than the bottom and all of them have a point at the bottom.

If you want to start with a snowflake and turn it into a heart, what part of a round snowflake could you fit into a heart? Are there bits that hang over the edges? Are there areas you have to fill in?


Take a look at this picture. Does it give you any ideas? One of the smallest heart shapes you can make is just a simple cloverleaf surrounded by a chain. If you take a look at a lot of the heart patterns available, you'll see that may of them use a cloverleaf as their base. In a simple cloverleaf heart the central picot is often made longer to accentuate the heart shape.

Let's say you want to make a heart that's bigger than a cloverleaf. Do the circles in the picture suggest anything else? How about 3 snowflakes?

When you create a snowflake, you want a six sided shape with points at the tip of each side. For the purpose of creating a heart the points just get in the way, so the extra bits that make a round motif into a snowflake are just omitted.

Look at the area of the heart shape not covered by the circles. Notice that there are 2 small triangular areas on either side and another at the bottom. To create a heart from 3 snowflakes you need to add a little bit of tatting in between each top motif and the bottom one, and another little bit at the bottom to accentuate the heart shape.

Attaching motives together gives you the right general outline, but if you want an unmistakable heart you need to tie it all together by adding a defining row of chain.


That's what I did with this heart. I used the centre part of Snowflake 5 and omitted the outward facing rings. The 2 top motives are joined along the flat side of the hexagon shape and the bottom one joins at the point of the hexagon shape. That arrangement meant that the top motives were rounder and the bottom one had a point at the bottom.

The shape suggested a heart, but it really became a heart when the outer row of chain was added connecting to the middle of each chain on the motives and adding the cloverleaf to fill that space between the motives on each side. Since the bottom motif already had a downward point, adding a cloverleaf would have been too much. A single outward facing ring was enough to finish it off.

If the motif had been more round and not quite so pointed, a cloverleaf could have been used.
The same thing can be done with any round motif. Just select a design you like, attach 3 of them together in a triangular shape and then fill in the spaces to make your own heart.

A closer look at snowflakes

Take a look at the picture of the original snowflakes again. Now that we have examined some of them in detail, let's look at them all. See how snowflakes 1, 2, 6 and 8 all have the same centres? The variations come on the outward facing rings.

Snowflakes 3 and 4 have the same centre ring with inward facing cloverleaves attached to it, but different outward facing rings. Snowflakes 5 and 7 are different again. Instead of all rings or all cloverleaves in the middle, these 2 designs alternate a single inward ring with a cloverleaf. That presents a problem. Did you notice it?

In these designs all of the rings have been the same size (3-3-3-3-3-3 for a total of 18 stitches) A cloverleaf has 3 rings and it's bigger than a single ring. The middle ring of a cloverleaf is taller than a single ring of the same stitch count.

Take a look at the picture of Snowflake 3 shown here. A line has been drawn through the cloverleaf showing where it joins to the cloverleaves on either side. See how that connecting line is below the base of the middle ring? If the cloverleaf with the line through it is removed and replaced with a single ring, something has to be adjusted. That single ring will have to be much larger than that middle ring of the cloverleaf in order for the cloverleaves on either side to join to the centre of it.

You can see snowflakes 5 & 7 have alternating cloverleaves, and larger single rings (3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3 for a total of 24 stitches). This allows the joining picots of the cloverleaf to join to the second and sixth picot of the larger single ring.

Choker - 2nd try

We already looked at my first attempt at making a suitable medallion. While I was doing the next medallion I had time to think about how to make the basic snowflake #3 a little bigger, but not as big as my first try.

I know I haven't fully dealt with the medallion yet, but as a designer you need to think of the whole project as well as the individual pieces. If you have 2 parts that need to fit together you have to design them both together so that the connecting parts - connect.

My second step was to create a band for the medallion. It needed to be something similar to the medallion so that they looked like they belonged together, not too skinny, and not too wide. I also had to think about how to attach the band. I could easily just tat them separately, but there are fewer ends if you can do it in one piece. The medallion was going to start with the snowflake so I was using both cloverleaves and individual rings and cloverleaves are a bigger shape for a wider band.

You want to think about the profile of different elements of tatting when you are designing a piece of lace. The diagram at the left shows nose to nose cloverleaves. It makes a nice wide band, but it is kind of ordinary and boring.The point where the 2 middle rings connect makes solid bars and where the side ring of one cloverleaf connects with the next cloverleaf there is an empty space. Visually it gives a ladder effect, which wasn't quite what I had in mind for the band.

I had used the inward facing cloverleaves to keep the small outer rings in place on the medallion but I really didn't need anything that large. As I looked at my first try I realized that I could just add in more little outer rings and that would give me the size I needed and it would still give me the filigree effect. So on the next snowflake I put some picots on the chain on either side of the small ring and I did a second row with chains and small rings filling in the spaces.

The partial drawing on the right is the design I ended up with. There is no stitch count and only part of the drawing. This is a design primer after all, you're supposed to be figuring this stuff out.





As I was making the outer ring and chain row, I realized I could just continue the chain right on out to the band doing chains and cloverleaves, then turn it at the end and come back doing more chains and cloverleaves and just continue around the rest of the medallion, repeating it on the second side, doing it all in one piece. I like things that are all in one piece, that means fewer ends to hide.



Those cloverleaves really are boring. So I dropped off one small side ring and ended up with a whole cloverleaf sandwiched in between 2 partial cloverleaves. It gave the same width to the band, but it broke up the ordinary cloverleaf shape and as an overall visual effect, resulted in solid blocks of colour separated by negative space in the band.



And again here is the drawing of the band without the stitch count.


Sometimes designing means that you do some things by planning and some things by trial and error. You can see the final results here. The picture shows the medallion and one side of the choker.

You can easily create your own choker. Select a snowflake you like, add a row to make it round or square or diamond shape, or whatever you like and add a matching row of edging for a band.

If you have and questions or comments, go ahead and ask and I'll try to answer them

Where do we go from Snowflakes?

When you talk about designing there are a lot of aspects to examine. We've been looking at how you might gain some experience by modifying an existing design.

One of the other aspects of designing is just coming up with ideas. Where does the inspiration come from? It comes from lots of things. Previously we looked at snowflake 8 and how it grew into a doily. In this instance, my inspiration came from a crocheted hexagon. There are lots of things that might catch your attention and provoke you into thinking about ways that you might turn it into tatting. Sometimes you go looking for inspiration, and sometimes it comes looking for you.

A few years ago I saw a commercial for a fashion show and the black choker worn by one of the models intrigued me. I only saw it briefly as the model walked down the runway and off screen. It was a round black medallion on a black band and it looked somewhat like a tattoo. The medallion was quite dense in the centre with some filigree toward the edge. As soon as I saw it I thought I could do it in tatting.

The first step was to create the medallion and I had to do a little planning before I started. I selected snowflake 3 as a base since it was the one most like the choker. A snowflake has 6 sides and you can turn it one of 2 ways.
You can have a single point on either side and 2 points top and bottom like the example on the left. If you attach the strap part of the choker this way it has to be skinny because you only have one side to join on to.


Or you can have 2 points on either side and one point top and bottom like this picture. That allows you to use a wider neck band, but then the top and bottom of the medallion only have a single point so the shape looks less round. Either way it wasn't quite what I was looking for.



Another option is to work with an 8 sided shape like this one shown here. 8 sides or pattern repeats allowed for 2 on top and bottom and 2 on each side. 8 repeats also made the snowflake that much larger which was another plus.


When you start with a central ring, you need to have some idea of where you're going with the design before you start. The central ring needs to be big enough for what you want to arrange around it and it needs to have enough picots on it. If you're doing a six sided snowflake you need 6 joining picots, but an 8 sided medallion needs 8 picots. Thinking about what you want to accomplish helps you to make some essential decisions before you begin.

If you tat quickly and you have a lot of available tatting time, you don't mind doing a design several times to get it just right. When you don't tat quickly and you don't have a lot of free tatting time, a little extra time thinking things through will help you get closer to doing it right the first time. If you're a novice designer, thinking before you tat will save you a lot of frustration.

Note: Picots are really the spaces between stitches. So if there isn't a picot there, you can wiggle a hook in between the stitches to do a join. But, if your other joining picots are longer you may see a difference in the final piece. When it's in the centre of a piece it is more likely to be seen than if this action is taken on the side of a project. I tend to keep all of my picots a medium size. As a designer, this is a trick I often find useful. Tatting is a slow meditative process and I may change my mind about how I want to work a project several times while in the process. If I start out planning one thing but see that a slight variation will work better I'll change my plans and start wiggling my hook between stitches.

When you are trying to figure out how many picots to use and where to put them, remember odd numbers work best. Look at the pictures above. If you're going to join onto this first round of the snowflake and make another row where are you going to join to the chains? Typically, the next rowwouldd join to either the base of the chains on the previous row or to the mid point of the chain. If there was only one picot on the chain it would be in the middle of the chain.

Let's say you wanted to double the number of pattern repeats on the next row of a doily starting with a first row like snowflake 3. That would mean you'd have to do 2 pattern repeats for each chain. Where would you place the picots? The easiest way is to use 3 equally spaced picots on each chain and then do the join on the next row to the first and third picot, leaving the middle picot free. You could also do 5 equally spaced picots and then do the joins on the second and fourth picot leaving the 1st, 3rd and 5th picot free. Using more picots gives you more options on subsequent rows.


Snowflake 3 uses a typical cloverleaf where all 3 rings of the cloverleaf are the same size. Just like choosing to use an 8 sided motif rather than a 6 sided one, the size of the rings, the size and placement of the picots and the number of picots affects the overall look of a design. See the 2 cloverleafs at the left? It's only one small change but it has an impact on the whole design I chose to use a cloverleaf with smaller side rings, and I also used smaller outer rings for the base motif, since they would be more like the filigree edge on the model's choker.

I needed a bigger medallion than just the snowflake shape and I added a second row of inward facing cloverleaves attached to the tip of the outward facing rings. I had to use twice as many cloverleaves to stretch around the outside of the snowflake. Each alternate cloverleaf wasn't attached to the snowflake, which allowed the outer row to flex easily, but unattached parts of a design are able to twist and turn so I usually try to avoid them. That's another little consideration when you are creating your own lace. Most of the time you'll want all of the rings attached to something or they won't stay in place.




This was the design. It was almost 3 inches across and it was too big to fit nicely on the neck, but it told me what I needed to know about the size. This partial bit hasn't been blocked and it cups severely. The picture may look flat, but the real thing isn't. So I learned that it was too big and that the stitch count I used in the chains needed to be increased.

Sometimes even with a good plan, you still have to make a couple of tries.

Snowflake #3

After I completed snowflake #2 I knew I wanted something a little larger, but I didn't want anything too labour intensive and I wondered what it would look like if I faced the cloverleaves inward instead of outward. That presented a problem. The previous snowflakes all had a single rings facing inward. I knew that once I had cloverleaves facing inward I was going to have a big empty space in the middle and there wasn't going to be anything holding the cloverleaves in place .

The obvious answer was to attach them all to a central ring, but how big a ring did I need? Trial and error? I wouldn't know if I had it right until the whole motif was done. The motif with one ring inward and one outward took me about an hour to tat and with double the number of rings I could count on nearly 2 hours of tatting time just to find out how big that central ring needed to be.

This is where I used another designer's trick. I worked from the outside in. I knew what the outside was going to be, I knew that the chains had to be long enough to arch over the cloverleaves so I used chains with 3 picots (3-3-3-3). When you're doing something in reverse you have to think ahead a little. Take a look at the diagram. Remember this is how the pattern should be written, not how I tatted it.

I needed to be able to have all of the outside completed before doing the middle ring of the last cloverleaf. If I started at the cloverleaf, the last thing to be done would be the chain. In order to have the chain completed by the time I got to the last cloverleaf I had to start at the chain. When I got to the last cloverleaf I tatted the first ring with one shuttle the third ring with the second shuttle, then used both to make the central ring.

That positioned both threads in the middle of the motif and then I just started tatting a ring and tightened up the stitches, like you do when you close a ring. When I was at the point where I could join to the picot on the tip of the next cloverleaf, I had my stitch count of 4. Then I just finished the ring off using making 4 ds between the joins to the central ring. When I closed the ring, the motif was done.

This is a very simplistic version of working from the outside in. Take a look a Mark's post for September 28, 2006 and you can see that it's exactly what he's doing for the Geisha's sleeve. He's created a framework for the lace to give him a more precise way of establishing what he needs to do.

I was viewing an embroidery blogs and noted that the blogger had created her own stitch library as a reference tool. On the e-mail list I mentioned that I have a bag full of scraps from things I have tatted that didn't work. In a sense they are my reference library. If I want to know how big a ring is going to be in a certain thread with a certain stitch count, I can just look for a sample that size. I can fit different pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle and see what is visually appealing.
Don't consider a design that didn't come out the way you expected it, as a failure. You not only learned through the process what doesn't work, you've also gained another piece of reference material.

Now that you know the stitch count for the inner ring which is used in the remaining snowflakes, you have enough information to figure out the rest of them for yourself. As a way of stretching your abilities and your confidence, I'm not going to give you the rest of the snowflake patterns. You can do it without.

Next we're going to look at what else you can do with a snowflake, but that's for another post.

Answering Some Questions

There have been some interesting comments as well as some discussion on several of the e-mail lists. I'm going to try to address them here.

"I've always fancied designing and didn't know where to start." That's the way a lot of people feel. They seem to think that only a few people can design. That isn't true. The truth is only a few people actively try to design things. If you've followed Jane Eborall's blog you'll know that she started to tat a long time ago. She has the experience of a lot of years of tatting to just know when and how things will work. With that experience comes a certain amount of speed. As a beginner, struggling to complete each stitch, the idea of experimenting and just throwing away or cutting off a piece of lace is heartbreaking. For a novice a small motif might take several days to complete, but the experienced tatter might do the same motif in less than and hour.

One of the things you have to face as a designer is that things may not work as anticipated. Several years ago I designed an oval doily and the tatter who requested it wanted something simple and something with a lot of picots. Notice the centre? Does it look familiar? If you think it looks like snowflake #1, you'd be right. It's another one of the snowflake doilies.

Both the pink doily and the oval doily have similarities. For sure their centres are similar and they are both just rows of ring and chain, but their shapes are different and while the pink doily has very few decorative picots, the oval one has hundreds. The lack of picots makes the geometric shape of the diamonds really stand out in the pink doily, there's nothing to get in the way of the shape. On the other hand, the picots on the oval doily make the lines of the chains appear thicker and really outlines parts of the doily.

The oval doily was a real stinker to create. Several times entire rows had to be cut off because the stitch count didn't work. If you are making a circular shape you can just repeat a pattern segment and it's the same all the way around. In an oval shape the sides have to stretch farther than the ends. I had a drawing that gave me a rough idea of how to proceed, but I had to abandon the drawing and go back to the simple trial and error method. Sometimes you just have to accept that the only way you are going to know if an idea will work is to try it.

So, where do you start? You start with what you know. For example, do you know what the impact of picots have on a piece of lace? Tat a length of edging doing three rings of 5-5-5-5 and chains of 5-5-5. Then do rings of 5-3-3-3-5 and chains of 3-3-3-3-3 then do rings of 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 and chains of 2-2-2-2-2-2-2. You can do even more variations and you can alter the length of the picots. See the difference? Now you know something you didn't know before, and you have a piece of tatting that you can use as a reference.

"Sometimes what I do is just cut and tie (at the end of a row) and after is finished then I study it to see a flowing path using split rings and chains." It's not unusual if you have just cut off a row that isn't working and re-attached your thread, to start back at a different point. If you're designing you may tat a piece one way, yet write instructions for it another.

For example, snowflake #8 starts in the centre, but for the doily it starts on the ring at the top of the chain. If you have just cut off part of a row, you may have to join your thread at an inward facing ring, (like the rings in the centre) rather than at an outward facing ring. Once you have the project completed, you know where you need to start and how you need to climb from row to row, so when you draw it, if you are using a visual diagram, or write it out, you will give instructions that tell people how to do it logically, not necessarily the way you worked it.

Actually, because you don't always know where you are going with a design, you sometimes end up doing some really awkward and bizarre climbing out. For example, you start a new row and think I wish I'd put an outward facing ring at this point so that I could connect to it. But you don't have an outward facing ring and so you do an SCMR to put a ring where you need it or maybe you do a combination of a ring off the side of a split ring in combination with a SCMR or something else weird. It's not what you'd normally do, but it lets you have something that looks the same and when you write out the pattern you write it the way you should have tatted it. Sometimes I find myself tatting bits and connecting them together. I might do a wing of a butterfly and the second wing just doesn't work. I cut off the offending bits and just tat the second wing not worrying about climbing out or anything just to see if an idea works. When I get something that I like, I start over again and do the whole thing properly using split rings or whatever I need to achieve the results I want.

If I'm doing a simple motif I might start with a ring of 4-4-4-4 but decide that a ring of 6-6-6-6 would look better, or allow for a more advantageous picot placement, I don't start again, I just keep going. I may end up with 4 or 5 different rings and as many different chains. It doesn't matter. Each one tells me something. Then I can start again and do the whole thing over again incorporating all of the variations I want to keep.

"I tried to enlarge the pattern because I can't read it very well." As you have probably noticed, the stitch count for the doily is almost unreadable. Blogger is shrinking the image to fit it into the space and while I might be able to re-do the diagram for part of the doily, I'm not going to be able to get much more to fit into the blog. I've decided that I'm going to re-make the doily so that I have a reliable stitch count for it and I'll include it in the next newsletter. If you are feeling adventuresome and want to try it from the information already given, I will answer any questions you have.

Jane made some terrific observations and while she described her approach to designing as hit or miss, we all know that her designs are always a hit. She also mentioned that when she's designing a particular animal she looks for a generic picture to use as a guideline for her pattern. So do I. It helps to have a visual reference to work with usually something without a lot of detail, but with the important parts clearly marked. Clip art is often more helpful than a photograph because it is stripped down to just the essentials. Kids colouring books can be very helpful for this kind of thing. Sometimes I bring the picture into my drawing program, stretch it to a large size and then draw the key points right on the picture. Then I can remove the picture and fill in the spaces with oval or round shapes representing rings or cloverleaves and link them together with curved lines for chains.

Jane also stated that she rarely sketches an idea she just tats and tats until it's right. I find it hard to do that with larger projects although the daffodils were created without a drawing. I happened to have a couple of reject pieces of tatting sitting on my desk and it gave me an idea. I loaded my shuttles and tatted the flower start to finish and it just turned out right. I didn't even need to draw the leaves, they just worked out but for bigger pieces I find a drawing gives me a framework to work with. I often do rough drawings without stitch count or picots to work from and I add the stitch count and picots after I'm done.

Snowflake 8, the second row

Where does a design start from? I have already told you that my inspiration for the pink doily came from a crocheted hexagon. There are lots of things that might interest you enough that you would want to re-create them in tatting. Sometimes it's just a matter of thinking about it. Sometimes you go looking for inspiration, and sometimes it comes looking for you.

Have you figured out the second row of the doily?. The snowflake starts with a ring in the centre and ends with the last chain joining back to the starting ring. That's OK for a snowflake, but when you are working on a doily you want to be able to continue on to the next row. In fact, if you have an idea of how the design is going to develop, as I did with this pattern, you want to think ahead not only for the next row, but several rows so that you can climb from one row to the next in the most efficient manner.

Sometimes designs just happen, especially smaller designs. You find yourself just tatting away and you try something a little different. Maybe the change is just adding more picots, or making a cloverleaf with small outer rings instead of all the same size or changing the connection point on a ring. Sometimes you like the results and sometimes you don't.

Sometimes, like with this design you sketch something out and work from your sketch. When you are designing something for your own use, it doesn't matter where you start or end, but if you are going to design your own pattern, you really ought to write it down. That way you can repeat the pattern again later. You may even publish your pattern so you want to think in terms of explaining what you are doing to someone else.

The central snowflake when used in the doily begins with the ring at the top of the chain. This allows the row to end back at the top of the chain where the snowflake joins into the transition row. Sometimes the best way to solve a maze puzzle is not by starting at the beginning, but by starting at the end and working backwards. Since this design was already drawn and I was just following the diagram, I just had to find a pathway that let me work from row to row.

That means looking at where the current row is going to end and then seeing what is the best way to climb into the next row. There are often several ways of climbing from one row to the next in a doily. Some pathways can require a single split ring, while others may require a split chain with a ring at the end working backwards into another split ring and it can get very complicated. Sometimes the required steps to move from row to row just aren't worth it. Especially on the outer rounds of a doily where you may find you have to stop and re-fill your shuttle anyway. Sometimes the best method of climbing out it just cut and tie. Don't be afraid to suggest cut and tie in such a case. Your the designer, you get to make the rules.

I already mentioned that the rings in the snowflake had a total of 18 stitches and the rings on the succeeding rows had to be either 16 or 20 stitches. If you figured out that they were 20 stitches, you were right.

Here's the diagram with row 2. Notice that some of the rings are shaded or partly shaded. The shading denotes the rings or parts of rings that are done with the second shuttle. This is a method I use to make my patterns easier to understand. You'll also notice some arrows along the chains or going through the centre of a split ring. They tell you the direction of the work.
That first block of 7 rings is where row 2 begins and ends. The first part of it is marked A,B,C,D then the design continues on to the next pattern repeat. At the end of the row it is marked AA, BB, CC. Then it climbs into row 3, which begins the base of the diamonds.





Whether you write your patterns out using long or short notation, or draw a visual pattern, try to think not only of what you want to say, but think about how someone else might interpret your instructions. Make the assumption the the person working from your pattern is a new tatter who doesn't have any experience. Some things that you wouldn't have to tell an experienced tatter, you do have to tell a beginner. Always write your patterns so that a beginner can follow them. If a beginner can work from it, then anyone can.

What I've been doing

I haven't been doing much lace for the newsletter or for the 25 motif challenge mostly because I've been doing this. DMC gold thread on white satin, a gift for my brother and his wife who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. The lettering is embroidered in chain stitch using 2 strands of the same thread. This heart has turned out to be a useful little pattern and I've decided to put it in the next newsletter.

Look what the snowflake grew into

Today we're looking at snowflake number 8. It's nothing really exciting is it? Pretty much the same thing as the first snowflake with 2 rings on the outside instead of one. When I had completed all of these snowflakes I decided that I'd use each one as a base or starting point for something else and that began what I call my snowflake doilies. Here's what number 8 turned into. With nothing more that the picture and the base snowflake you could probably tat this doily even if you don't think you could.

Can you see the snowflake in the middle?

I used to stare at my crocheted tablecloth pictured on the right and think those round shapes in it remind me of tatted rings. Then one day I sat down with the drawing program and started to build rings to make the diamond shape like in the tablecloth. I needed a large enough centre to start from to get the required size and shape to make it work and I decided that I wanted to use snowflake number 8 for the centre. After that I needed to make a transition row from the snowflake into the diamond shape I had already drawn.

Once I had the rings laid out in the pattern I wanted it was just a matter of tatting the chains long enough to stretch from one grouping of rings to the next. All the rings are the same size, so can you figure it out? I have given the doily away and the picture shown here is all there is to work from.

How would you go about tatting this? When we're tatting snowflakes we start with the rings in the middle. Now we're making a doily and we have to think a little differently. We need to be able to go seamlessly from one row to the next, so where do we start?

The second row, that transition row is a grouping of 7 rings obviously some of them have to be split rings. Here is a partial drawing without any stitch count or any picots. How would you solve this puzzle? Where would you start the snowflake in order to climb out of one row into the next? How would you get from the transition row into the rest of the doily.Try printing off the drawing and tracing the pathway you think ought to be followed.

The rings on the snowflake are 5 picots separated by 3 doublestitches. The doily has very few decorative picots what do you think the stitch count is for the rings in the body of the doily? The snowflake has 6 segments of 3, or 18 stitches in each ring . The body of the doily has rings with only 3 picots or 4 segments with X number of stitches. 18 does not divide by 4 so the rings have to be either slightly smaller (16 stitches) or slightly larger (20 stitches).

I'd like to see what answers you come up with before continuing.

Design Snowflake 6

The first snowflake was skimpy, the second was much fuller looking, but still seemed a little small. So I designed number 3. I have been thinking things through and in order to keep things simple, I'm going to change the order in which the snowflakes are presented. They are numbered on the original picture in the order that I tatted them, but for teaching purposes that isn't the best order to follow. So the next snowflake we're going to look at is snowflake number 6.

See the same inner ring arrangement for all 3 snowflakes? Look at the chain, it's the same chain with 2 picots. The outer edge has been changed by simply alternating a single ring with a cloverleaf. Small changes, but a totally different look.


Maybe you think you can't design. Could you have done this? Of course you could, you just have to have the confidence in yourself to try. Take a look at number 8 could you do that one? Does it look a little bit dopey to you? After 8 quick variations on a theme, I was running out of ideas and number 8 is the results. We'll look at number 8 next.

Are you enjoying this? Is it giving you ideas? I can see that a lot of folks have been stopping by, but I don't know if it's being helpful or not without feedback. Are there questions you want to ask? Don't be shy, others probably want to know too.

Snowflake 2

The first snowflake when compared to the lacy snowflake is kind of skimpy. So I needed to beef it up. Do you see how I did that?

There were 2 changes to this design. Did you catch them both? The obvious change was the replacement of the single ring on the outside of the chain with a cloverleaf. See how much of a difference it made? The first one looks naked in comparison and the denseness of the rings around the outside of the motif makes the negative space created by the chains really stand out.
Did you notice the other change? The chains on the first motif have 3 picots between the inner ring and the outer ring. The second motif has only 2.

Could you figure out what the stitch count was for the cloverleaves? If you guessed 3, you were right.

If you didn't, take a look at the inner rings. You can see that they are the same size in both motives and I told you what the stitch count was for the first snowflake. Now look at the rings on the cloverleaves, see that they are the same size again?

When I'm designing something flat like a doily I tend to stay with the same kind of stitch count. It means that in drawing software I can start with one ring and just keep pasting it. The design is uniform so I don't have major adjustment headaches. Not only that, when someone tats the design they can enjoy the process instead of having to check every ring to make sure they have the stitch count straight. I have used different sizes in a design especially where shaping is an issue. I just don't usually.

Designing isn't hard and the best way to get into it is to do something like this. Start with a known design and change just one element. Then use your new design and change one more element. Eventually you have a totally new pattern.

Here's the pattern for the second motif. How close did you come?

Next - Number 3 are you ready for the challenge this one presents?

Edited 2016: The purpose of posting these simple designs was to get people thinking about how designs are created, but over the years beginners have commented, asking how to tat these patterns and where to start. So I have now uploaded a modified version of the diagram, with the starting point marked and arrows for the direction of tatting.  The shaded rings are tatted with the second shuttle. This should make it easier for beginners to tat.

Designing Primer

Since I'm sort of the caretaker for the 25 Motif Challenge blog I get some dialogue about things that don't show up on the challenge page.
Here are some of the things that I think it's good for although I'm sure there are more:

1. It keeps you tatting.
2. It gives you a tangible goal.
3. It gives you the opportunity to make mistakes and find creative ways to fix them.
4. Group effort gives you the encouragement to continue.
5. The challenge is personal. You aren't competing with anyone else, you are just challenging yourself to keep going.
6. It gives beginners a reason to keep tatting and thereby provides them the opportunity to improve their skills.
7. It gives designers a reason to design. (As if they needed it.)
8. It has created many wonderful new laces which give others the opportunity to share in the design process and to see how designers develop their designs.
9. It has given newer designers a reason to write out their designs.
10. It has given tatters a greater sense of community.

I promised that I'd start to show the design process I go through. I'm sure other designers probably do some of the same things. You've no doubt heard me mention before that I once did a series of snowflakes to go out in the Christmas cards to my family. I began with the lacy snowflake from the trio below. It's very pretty and I did enough of them for Rob's family but the lace is very dense and they took a long time to tat and I have 8 siblings! I needed something roughly the same size, but faster to make.

In the picture above you can see the 8 snowflakes I eventually ended up with. I've numbered them so that you can see how they evolved. The first one is a variation of the beaded snowflake from my web site, so I already knew the stitch count.

Here's the pattern for the first one and in case you can't read the stitch count everything is 3. Knowing where I started from, can you figure out the pattern for the next one? Experienced designers would laugh at the question, but if you haven't designed before, see if you can. Many times I have created a new design because I just made a mistake in reading a pattern. Designing isn't hard, but like tatting, it takes practice. This is a very forgiving design that's really hard to mess up, so it's a good piece to start with. And you know what? I'm still doing variations of this same design.

Newsletter Update

I am going to continue with the newsletter, although the format may change slightly. I have created 4 new drawings in the last 2 days, so I guess creativity is back in full swing. Maybe what I needed was a change of direction. Whatever, the reason, I will be continuing to produce new patterns as long as the Lord keeps giving me the ability to do so.

Want to see what I've been playing with? Here's a first draft.