Design Challenge 1B

I did another variation of from the design challenge and when it was done I wondered how it would look as a doily.

It has possibilities, but I'm not sure if I like it well enough to design an outer border that would bring it all together. Before you go shooting yourself for being slow, this doily is just a photo image copied and pasted. I wanted to see what the negative space would look like where they join. I like the join, but I'm not crazy about the outer edge. I think maybe it would need something to bring it all together and connect the outer points. I had no idea that the points were going to look so square, but it does make for an interesting design element.

Now there's an idea for an eight person round robin. The first person does a snowflake, the next 6 just make and attach a repeat of the first snowflake, and the last person has to do an outer round to finish it off before sending it home. So everyone would make 7 snowflakes, all different, and one round to finish off a doily, and everyone ends up with a doily which is mostly their own design.

Cross linking

I just thought that I'd post some technical information while I'm thinking about it. A few weeks ago the tatting community banded together to help get some purloined pictures removed from a web site. The web site owner had copied pictures from other people's blogs to promote the sales of their merchandise.

I copy pictures from other people's blogs to post in my own blogs all the time. So what's the difference? Doesn't that mean that I am infringing on copyright too?

NO. For 2 reasons. First of all, when I began copying pictures from people's blogs for the 25 Motif Challenge blog, it was because people offered me the pictures. Later on I asked new participants for their permission. When it became too cumbersome to contact each person individually, I wrote an explanation on the blog advising people that when they joined the challenge it was with the understanding that their pictures WOULD be copied.

Each picture that is copied is identified as to where it came from and each entry includes a link back to the blog where it originated.

Secondly, posting the pictures of your tatting on the challenge blog is not promoting any merchandise I have for sale. Those 2 things make a huge difference.

Something that you may not realize, is that by participating in the 25 Motif Challenge, or in the latest Design Challenge, your blog is becoming more visible and more popular. One of the things that causes a web site to appear close to the top of the list in a search engine is the number of hits the web site receives. When another blog or web site links to your blog or website, you become more visible. More people find your blog, more people visit your blog, and you move up in the ratings.

As the search engine robots work through the internet following all of the links to their final destination, your page comes up more often, with each new link there is another robot finding you and adding you to their list of places to visit.

The cross linking of people to one another and to the 25 Motif Challenge page is making you and tatting more visible on the internet. We are becoming easier and easier to find. Tatting really is alive and well on the internet and these challenges are not only helping us to improve our tatting skills, they are also making us more noticeable.

Taking my own challenge

Since I started this challenge it's only fair that I give my rendition of the challenge image. I started with a couple of ideas and began tatting. This was my first drawing. The drawing only mildly resembles the initial image,

but that didn't matter because no matter how much I tried to make a hexagon with it, it just wanted to be an edging, so I cut it off and started again...with the same results.

That wasn't working so I sat back and looked at the image that Bev called a Rorschach blot. At first all I could see was the letter 'W' but when I looked at it again I saw butterflies. So I played around and came up with another drawing. This one looks a little more like the original image.

So I started tatting. I wasn't sure of the spacing between the butterflies and the chains at the bottom looked weird and disconnected, so as I did more repeats I changed it, adding a short chain between the large rings and adding a join on the tiny split ring at the bottom. It got closer to what I wanted. So I cut the thread and started over again.

See all the ends hanging? When a design gets tweaked over and over again, I just work with whatever thread is still on the shuttles and add more thread in as I need it. There's no point in starting out fresh with fully loaded shuttles because chances are that I'm going to have several tries at it. I weave the threads in as I go if I can, but if I can't, I just let them hang and then sew them in when everything is done. I don't attempt designing with specialty threads as it's most likely just going to be a waste of thread. Sometimes I load the shuttles and tat the design that's in my head start to finish and it comes out perfect the first time. Other times it doesn't.

Here is the latest result. I think I should re-do it adding a longer chain between the large rings at the top because it wants to cup a little. One extra stitch between the butterflies would probably work out better. It's heard to tell since this piece hasn't been blocked yet.

This was one variation of the image. I have another one I'm still working on. After 3 false starts, I'm about half way through it.

I've been tagged

I have been tagged by several people in the last few weeks, or maybe it's months? First it was the Arte Y Pico Awardand more recently it's the Brilliante Weblog award

and while I appreciate the vote of confidence, as you can tell from how long, it's taken me to acknowledge these awards, doing so is way, way down on my priority list. Actually, I don't even get much time to blog here on my personal blog because I spend so much of my computer time updating the 25 Motif Challenge blog. Right now instead of blogging about being tagged, I really ought to be emailing everyone in the round robins to get the pictures of all their pieces so that I can update the Round Robin blog. After which I should send around a notice about a new series of round robins. Then it should be time to update the challenge page again...

Where is that bag of TIME. I'm sure it's around her somewhere.........

I challenge you!

Here's a challenge for you. See this image? Use it as a base to design a snowflake. Use either the blue or the white for your outline and see what you can come up with.

Anne took the challenge and designed a beautiful piece based on this image, but she thinks hers looks more like a flower.
Marty has her interpretation done. Her first attempt had many points of different shapes, then she ran out of thread. After reloading her shuttles shae came up with a successful snowflake.