Dorothy Edging Diagrams Corrected!

Many thanks to Becky for catching the mistakes in my diagrams. I had omitted a picot from the corner of each round. The link in my patterns pages will take you to the revised pattern.

Happy International Tatting Day!

I hope all of you tatters have a wonderful day today that includes time to tat! If you don't know how to tat yet, many of us will be tatting in public today to share our art.  We love adding new tatters to our community. If you want to learn to tat, just ask us.

My International Tat Day gift to you this year is the pattern for the Dorothy Edging that I designed for a handkerchief for my mother this past Christmas. Some of you asked for the pattern, so I've been busy trying to refresh my limited diagramming skills to get it ready for you. I still have a bit to learn about using my graphics program, but this was the best I could do. I hope you enjoy using it. Just click on the image and you'll be taken to the pdf of the pattern. It will be added to my patterns page soon.

Joining to 2 picots at one location

The Dorothy Edging that I designed for my mother for Christmas requires you to join to a picot from two chains at one location. As a result of some confusion about how Norma Benporath intended for us to make a similar join in a round that was part of the Norma Benporath Mystery Border,  I started to explore different ways this might be done. I settled on making those joins by joining to each picot separately without completing a half stitch between rather than joining by pulling the thread up through both picots at the same time. It produced a different look. Since then I've tried up joins and down joins in various combinations as well. Click HERE to see the results of my explorations. This was not an attempt to explore all of the ways this could be done, but to explore the effects of some of the different ways of which I am currently aware.

I plan to celebrate International Tatting Day (April 1) by sharing another free pattern with you. I hope you'll drop by to see it.

Dorothy Edging - more Christmas 2015 projects

While I'm working on the Benporath mystery project, I'll share some more of my Christmas 2015 tatting.

I have lots of patterns and patterns in books, but sometimes you get an idea in your head and just can't find anything that fits just right. That's the story behind this edging. I wanted something dainty and open, sort of a stained glass window look. So I finally picked up shuttle and thread and started tatting. It fell into place perfectly. The thread is size 30 Cecelia.

Attaching my tatting to anything with needle and thread is a real challenge for me and causes hours, in this case days, of pain afterward, so please don't judge my sewing too harshly. I'm just thankful I managed to get it attached at all.

I call the pattern Dorothy in honor of my mother for whom I designed it. I'll try to work up a pdf of the pattern for you in the months to come, but I'm committed at the moment to another project for my granddaughter with only a few weeks to get it finished. Meanwhile, enjoy the pic.