Shuttling this way and tat

Here is what I did with the skein of thread that Suetta sent to me, It was Wildflowers by Caron and Sandstone colour.

The main piece was just a doodle that began as a compass, but I was watching what was left all the time I was tatting. So stopped at N,S,W and E. then added little rings to make it lay flatter, The other numbers are just little rings, with three picots, and the flower to fill the space at the bottom is from Mary Maynards gorgeous book Rings of Flowers. The background is dark green mounting board, and just a clock movement fitted in by my long suffering husband. It is only placed at the moment. He doesn't finish anything until I haven't changed my mind about what I would like done to it for at least a fortnight!!!!

I have just bought Mary Maynards second book called four square ring. So am now going to put my feet up and read, both the words and the lovely pictures,Then my shuttles can get busy, It is a book full of food for thought, ( I will fit in some motifs as well, honest) ............was going to make a thumb sucking tatbead baby for Jane, but got side-tracked.

 Here is motif no 6, a doodle in a bangle. It is made from the rest of the lovely variagated purple Perfect Quilters thread, combined with the aintient thin peach thread that I hid on the other motif,

Do you notice the improvement in the quality of my photo? Thank you Jane Eborall...again!!! Her suggestion was don't photograph...scan. As I told her, it is obvious when you are told isn't it?

By the way I did finish my ends properly...the ones on the outside are for hanging it up, and the little one in the middle is a stray dog's hair from Socks, he wanted to get his ten cents in.

This is what I did with the beautiful hand painted thread that I received from Suetta.It is called Raspberry Serbet, I plaited the tail!

This is motif no 5

It is in Altin Basik in shades of purple, no 50 thread. It was supposed to have a sort of spiderweb centre, but the Gremlins got into my shuttles!! and notheting fitted, I didn't realize this until I had made 5 of the points, so used the good old stand-by for mistakes my little heron shaped scissors and I cut the middle out and did a sort of perpetual chan middle with vsp's and finished the star points and fitted the middle in. The original pattern was from a vintage Coates leaflet with pieces missing that I found at a car boot sale so have been a little "creative" with the pattern. Apologies to Coates!!

This is a strange bookmark, but needs must when the Devil drives! I had this lovely rusty burgundy corded yard about as thick as usual 4ply knitting wool fom Prue on the exchange,

I just did a clover with 4 - 4 - 4 - 4 close x3,

then a chain of 6 - 6,

another clover, chain of 6 - 6 and joined to last ring of clover,

chain of 12 - 6 - 6

then I did clovers down the other side joining as I went, sewed in ends and added a tail, I liked it.

My grandson asked why I had given that Teddy a tail!!!

motif no 4, I had this one from trawling the net ages and ages ago, but I am so sorry, I dont have who it belongs to, my appologies to the designer. I would like to know, which is why I have posted it, So could someone please tell me? It is beautiful, and I would like to give it away,as I do with my bookmarks, but I can't without a little history attached on a little card.

 Here are the flowers I have grown!, the flower head is adapted from an excersise from Cardiff Picot Group run by Jennifer Williams, as is the back of the flower head, The leaves are done two ways, the one on the yellow flower is split rings of 3-3-3/3-3-3 close, for as long as you would like the leaf, then tat wire around the edge with 3-3, push wire through first p on splitring, 1-1 push wire through split ring and so on to base again, then with shuttle and ball tat around the edge making 5 chains between each picot and then joining to each p in between.

The picture doesn't really show that I threaded 90 gold beads onto the shuttle to put 3 at the top of each petal on the yellow flower.

The blue flower is a plain flower with a centre based on Irish crochet,ring of  1ds,p, x5, close. make a false  p. then work all chains, starting with 2 and increasing the number to fit snuggly around the shape, That was Jennifers design too.

The mauve one and the multi one, I threaded a lot of shiny black beads with a purple and blue shine to them onto the ball thread, did the 5 picot middle , and then just followed my nose adding them in when it looked time!

The big leaves were rings and chains, with a picot at each side and centre of outside of the ring, and in the middle of the chain, done as an edging, starting with a small ring and getting larger then smaller again, clover at the bottom and copy up the other side, tat around with wire for the edge, and bind onto the stalk,

Sorry I am so rubbish at writing my patterns, I am learning to do so!

 Here is motif no 2, It is made in a thread called Perfect Quilter made by Superior Thread Company,

It is my thread from Scott Hoover, lovely to work with, I want two motifs the same so I used a mucky peach coloured thred of almost the same weight and kept it as core thread by using shoe lace trick.

The motif pattern is by Jennifer Williams and was published in the Ring of Tatters Spring 2006 newsletter.

 This motif no 3 (I must ask my husband for photography lessons) The motif is made fromHakelgarn sise 20, and the candle is Omega size 30.

The motif is a triple layer done in one round based on Mary Maynards design from her book Rings of Flowers...a lovely book to play with.... The candle decoration is one of my very un-clever designs, but they are getting better, honest !

The threads came from Lily Morales in the Thread exchange. She also sent me a little ball to die for in a mellow peachy/terracotta colour. It is called Majestic and is size 80, I am being very ambitious and making a bookmark by Mary Konior. I will post it in about three years time when I finish it.

I will get Ron to take another photo of the green motif, it really is rather pretty.

 There! thats a bit better

I have had some really beautiful thread from Suetta, Hand painted, I will make something as soon as I have finished drooling over it, she also sent me a shuttle, very unusual, I havent seen one like that before, Will post it as soon as I make that camera realize that I am boss!!!!!

I had my first envelope from the thread exchange today, From Lily Morales, Beautiful threads, none of which I have used before. I am busy making something with the size 30 lovely pale yellow one. So watch this space! I have have playing with a flower to teach to my classes on Wednesday this week, I am very pleased with it so far. I will post a picture of it as soon as it is recognisable.

I wonder how big my classes are going to be this week. I have 13 students at the moment. I split the class into two groups so that they all had a seat in my room. So I had 5 in the afternoon and 8 in the evening last month. The afternoon ladies are a little more advanced than the evening ones, so therefore I will try and get them to make something to take home every month to keep the enthusiasm on the boil.

Sylvia's button bookmark.

Ds         double stitch

P           picot

J            join

Jbutton  join to button

Cl ring   close ring

First side.

Ring.         4 ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds, p 4ds. Cl.ring.

Chain        5ds.

*Ring        2ds, p, 4ds, j to ring at last p, 2 ds, jbutton 2ds, p, 4ds, p, 2ds. Cl ring.

Chain         4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds.

Ring           2ds, p, 4ds, j to ring at last p, 2 ds, j to same button. 2ds.p, 4ds, p, 2 ds, cl ring

Chain          4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds,

Ring            2ds, p, 4ds, j to ring at last p, 2ds, j to second button, 2ds, p, 4ds, p, 2ds, cl ring.

Chain           4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds.

**Ring             2ds, p, 4ds, j to ring at last p, 2 ds, j to same button, 2ds, p, 4ds, p, 2ds, cl ring.

 Chain        5ds.

Ring              4ds, j to ring, 4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds, cl ring,

Chain             5ds.

Ring               4 ds, j to ring, 4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds, cl ring.

Chain             5ds.

Repeat from  * to ** until 6 buttons are placed. Working 2 chain and ring sections between each pair of buttons.

Chain             6ds

Ring               4ds; join to previous ring, 4ds, p, 4ds, p, 4ds, cl ring.

Chain              6ds

Ring                4 ds, join p, 4 ds, join p, 4ds, cl ring.

Chain              6 ds.

Continue down second side the same as the first side.     

when joining the two sides together make a little space to put a tassle if required.

Of course I will share my button bookmark, but please realize that it isn't all my own work! I used Anne Franklins idea. I made this one with no 70 thread and the tiniest buttons that are sold for scrap booking, less than eighth of inch across. Ones with four holes. I hope you can understand my pattern. I am not good at writing them yet. I have no idea at all how to draw diagrams.

Thank you Jane and Jon for your comments, The Christmas motif in my photos is an excersize from Jennifer Williams to teaching pearl tatting,capping the ring and use of beads, it was fun to do, very hard concentration needed, I had only just learned to turn EVERY stitch, and then I had to turn one and not turn the next to get the chequered effect.

I don't know what is happening to the Welsh weather at the moment in one week we have had Srring, strong winds, snow, heavy rain to wash that away and today we are back to spring, Whatever happened to try on all the summer clothes in April ready for May and the winter clother end of September ready for October? That was the form in little bit of the world.

Will someone tell me if when I post a picture on the blog bit, can I take it out of the album? will it stay on this bit, or will I delete it