Thursday, June 2, 2016

Ikuta Layered Picots

I opted to work on muskaan's Ikuta tutorial part 2 last night instead of my WIP after figuring out just what I need to do next on the WIP. I've been wanting to get to this ever since she put it up. As I commented at her blog, her tutorials are really helping me to have a solid feel for where my threads are and need to be all the time. I truly think I just got lucky when I worked through the class material the first time on my own because my tatting looked right, but I really didn't fully understand why or why not, if you know what I mean.
The first ring was made with the shuttle thread picots to the front. I thought that one would be the easiest one as it seemed obvious to keep the shuttle threads to the front. I found it hard to keep both threads on my left hand, so I resorted to dropping the ring thread off my hand each time.

My second effort (bottom left) was an attempt to keep the ball thread picots to the front. While you can't tell from the picture, I let my threads get messed up so that some stitches wound up upside down which also messed up the alignment of the picots making it appear one was missing. It took some major pushing and pulling to get everything back in place since I didn't notice it until I had closed the ring. To make sure that was just a fluke, I tatted it again (bottom right). As you can see my work is getting better looking with the 3rd ring. I have to say that, for me, tatting with the ball thread picots to the front was the easiest. I started out trying to keep both threads on my left hand with the ball threads to the front, but it just wasn't working out. I started tossing the ball thread over the back of my right hand to keep it out of the way when not in use. When I needed to tat with the ball thread, it worked best for me to open the ring loop large enough that it could slide back on my left hand a bit, thereby making room for the ball thread to take its place temporarily in front.

Tatting of Ninetta's butterfly has been delayed until I can work with the next installment of muskaan's tutorial which I'm sure will cover overlapping picots in a ring.

Happy tatting!

6 comments:

muskaan said...

You can't tell, looking at the rings - they are so well-made ! I, too, prefer to drop the ring loop & pick it up when required.
I have uploading & typing the final part right now :-) The tutorial is over, some discussion is left. But my eyes are starting to ache & dinner needs to be prepared (in my new apron ;-P), so my apologies for another delay. Will get back at it in the morning.
Your feedback helps a lot - I will read & see if any change/explanation is required.
Signing off for the night

Wanda said...

Those rings are marvelous. I'm intrigued by muskaan's tutorial on this but haven't taken the time to try it yet. Great job!

God's Kid said...

Great learning!!! :)
I can understand doing and not understanding because when I was in art class in high school we were learning about perspective and drawing it. I could draw it, but couldn't understand it, and then after about 2 weeks and tons of discussion I had an "aha" moment and realized that when drawing in perspective it makes things look real....duh! :)

Eliz Davis aka Tatknot said...

Thanks, muskaan, Wanda, and God's Kid. And no hurry, muskaan, on the video. I have plenty of projects going to keep me busy.

muskaan said...

Eliz, just posted part 3, phew !
Take your time, though :-)))

Eliz Davis aka Tatknot said...

Thanks, muskaan. I took a quick look. I look forward to working through it.