Motif 27 and 28 Cobweb Doily

 

 I tagged along with The Hubs to Home Depot a few months ago. While he was doing his thing I entertained myself in the paint aisle. I love looking at the paint cards. This one caught my eye as I have thread similar to those colors. At one time I probably did hold the balls together but wasn't thrilled with the combo.

So I brought the paint card home, dug out those threads and made a pair of Cobweb Doilies from Tatting Doilies and Edgings by Rita Weiss.

I had two colors that sorta matched the lighter mauve so figured a little color play was in order. The ecru-y color on the card has a weird green tint to it but regular ecru looks just fine.

Since then I've picked up another card and as soon as I finish a few things I'll find a pattern for that.

Motif 26 Lavender & Lace

This is Lavender & Lace from "Tatting Doilies & Edgings" edited by Rita Weiss. It's 4 of the motifs joined together.

The thread is vintage Star brand in a peach varigation. It came from a bag of tatting threads and shuttles my sister-in-law picked up at a thrift store. I used up pretty much all of what was on the ball.

An adorable heart.

This is Susan Fuller's Heart's Desire pattern. I used DMC size 100.

JS doily round 10

This has not been pressed or blocked so please look past the twists and ruffles.
According to my notes, I started on this doily Sept. 14, 2014. I work on it in bursts and complete several rounds at time. Then I'll set it aside for awhile to work on something smaller that can be completed quickly or I take time to ponder what color(s) the next round should be.
At this point you're looking at 101.3 hrs that are completed. There were 11 hrs of work total that I had to cut out. Six and a half of those hours were from misreading the pattern on round 3. The rest of the time is from false starts on other rounds due to trouble I had reading his pattern and my work not looking right.
I'm thinking of doing the next round of a single row of split rings in a dark brown. The points that come next I want to do in the same ecru, sea green and dusty lavender that I've already done and worried the thin round of brown will be distracting or create an odd visual barrier that breaks up the doily into two parts. But at the same time the brown could add interest and a bit of contrast.
Now I'm wondering if introducing a new color in the outer points will look weird, like I ran out of a color and had to throw in brown to complete the project.
Now I'm wondering if I'm over thinking this.
Five more rounds to go.

Medallion round

Still continuing on with the cover doily from Jan Stawaz's Tatting Theory and Patterns. Each of the medallions takes me 1 1/2 hour to do. I also spent about 2 hours trying to figure the pattern out and cutting a lot of false starts out because I joined them wrong.

Once this round is done, it may become the largest doily I've ever done. I'm at the point were I'm worried I have the correct number of rings on the previous round so I can get in the correct number of medallions. I have always wanted to do a larger doiley but the fear of miscounting on the larger rounds has held me back.

I have enough violet thread to finish the medallions and not sure if I'll buy more or move on to different colors. I've bought a dark brown and a seafoam green to incorporated in this at some point.

JS Doily I

This is the cover doily from Jan Stawaz's Tatting Theory and Patterns.

I'm just now starting the medallions for this round. Well, actually I started a while ago, I can't seem to make them right and have cut off 2 of them already so I could start over. His doilys require a lot of attention and patience as the notation on the graphic isn't always so easy to follow. I have both of his books and his work is beautiful, but not always for the faint of heart.

So far these rounds are made with DMC Cebelia in ecru and Lizbeth #640, Antique Violet Medium in size 20.

For the first time I'm keeping track of my time in a larger project. So far I've logged at least 34.5 hrs on this. And 8.5 of those hours were cut off because I misread the pattern for the violet petals and was over half way around before I realized I wasn't supposed to join those petals like I did in the first round. It was frustrating, but at the same time a bit of a relief to finally realize that my mistake was the reason it was cupping.

Snowflake

This is  "Sahmura" from Jon Yosoff's Elegant Tatting Gems. It is made in Lizabeth size 80 color #163 Blue Ice. About 1 1/2" wide. My first snowflake of the season.

A new doiley

This is Doily 8 from Tatting Patterns and Theory by Jan Stawasz.  The center is made up of 19 of these little motifs joined together. Each one takes about an hour to hour and 15 to make, depending on how coordinated I am at the moment.

I'm using size 40 Lizabeth in Latte Foam.

Wedding garter

This is a wedding garter I made for a coworker of Scott's. It started out as Gina Butler's Wedding Garter. No matter how much I practiced, I could not get the dimpled ring to look right. So I modified it to a simple ring with 3 picots at the top. On I went until it was long enough, then I rounded the corner and started back up with the lock chain. Me and lock chains do not get along. Again, no matter how much I practiced I could never get the chains to be the same length even though I figured about 16 lock stitches was about the correct width. Oh, did I mention that the bride gave me 1/4" wide ribbon. (Note to self: next time give a width).

It got to the point where I stopped working on it and put it aside. I debated on starting a new one from a different pattern. Finally I couldn't wait any longer and ran out of time to start from scratch. In the mean time I saw someone else's garter on facebook where they just used a satin ribbon and attached the lace like an edging. So off to the craft store for a premade garter. I get it home and out of the packaging and it looked really small. I put it on and it almost cut the circulation off just above my knee. I wasn't sure if she wanted this as a keepsake or to actually wear on her wedding day.

So back to the craft store for ribbon and elastic.

I studied the premade garter and it looked like they just folded the ribbon in half and stitched very close to the edge. So that's what I did and then threaded through the elastic. Now what? How do I close this up? So I just sewed the ends together and hoped the seam wouldn't irritate her too bad if she did end up wearing it. After hand sewing the edging on, I used her ribbon to make the bow.

The bride loved it and I still don't know if she wore it for the ceremony.