Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Another cross & my tatting plans for the day

I finished this cross early Monday morning. It is Tatmom's Colossians 2:14 Cross. I don't like to hide ends into a long chain if I can help it so I chose a different starting position. Since Tatmom provides a nice diagram of the pattern, this was easy to do. I started with one of the center clover motifs. Thanks for a great pattern, Tatmom. It was a pleasure to tat and I love the way it looks.

What little tatting time I had yesterday was inside a moving vehicle, so I picked up Lene Bjorn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting and some white thread and started out the door. I spent more time trying to decide what to tat first than I spent tatting! The book is full of beautiful projects. I selected The Thirteenth Day of December and got started.

If you have this book, you are immediately going to realize how little tatting I accomplished when I tell you that I made it as far as the spot on round 1 where Lene suggests a false chain. I love learning new techniques, but one problem I run into is that I don't use them enough to make them my own so that I need to dig out the instructions every time I need them. Of course, I didn't take split chain instructions with me. I hadn't planned that far ahead.

The exciting news is that last night's Online Tatting Class lesson was the split chain and Mary Maynard shared a Candy Cane pattern for practice. I didn't make the class session, but I'm headed to the website today to print the instructions and review the log. So doily designs and The Thirteenth Day of December are temporarily UFOs while I master the split chain. I needed to set the doilies aside for a few days anyway so I can return to them fresh.

I've been thinking about making a list of techniques I would like to master and then setting myself a personal challenge to work with each technique until I feel really comfortable with it. I need to think it through and make the list first so I can see how many techniques I'm talking about. Maybe some of the rest of you would like to make a similar list and we can share some project ideas for practice. I expect Georgia's Online Class website will be my main resource.

Time to get back to work around here. Then I'm going to make that list!

6 comments:

Fox said...

Lovely tatting, Eliz!
Thanks for the link to the split-ring tutorial. Useful.
Fox : )

God's Kid said...

That cross is great and I really like the colors you used! :)

Michelle said...

The cross is beautiful!

I love the idea of working on techniques and would happily join in but I think you're way past me!

Eliz Davis aka Tatknot said...

Fox, the lesson was on the split chain rather than the split ring. It really looks like a great practice project.

Michelle, I was thinking we would each have to make our own list, but when I started going through my computer and putting my own list together, I realized that the split ring was the only technique I didn't feel needed work. However, I've since thought of some variations on the SR that I'd like to practice. It's a LOOOOONG list. LOL

Thanks, God's Kid. The thread is a variegated Manuella in size 20.

I really appreciate your comments.

Suztats said...

Your cross is beautiful, and I love the thread color!

Carla said...

This cross is beautiful!