Maltese Rings

The doily is fixed and moving in the right direction again. The butterfly looks much better. He is finished with only two wings and I owe Jane Eborall an apology for posting such a poor representation of her pattern. I think my outer picots are smaller and I may have added too many stitches in the chains between the wings. What led to me give Jane's butterfly a try was that she seemed to combine some techniques. One of the things I dislike about the look of my Maltese Ring Pinwheel Flake is that the Maltese rings seem to get a sloppy start because of a gap caused by the inner threads. I realize you can't tell this in the picture. It is probably one of those tiny things that just drives the creator mad--that would be me! Jane's diagram made me think that she starts differently. I haven't consulted with Jane, but it looked to me like she might be tatting the first and last ds in each Maltese ring with both shuttles, thereby giving the inner picots a nice clean start inside the ring. It works! I also noticed a combination of techniques around the outward facing ring of the top wing segment. (You may want to review Miranda's notes on the differences and similarities between Daisy Picots and Maltese Rings.) Jane takes a break from the usual production of Maltese ring double stitches to produce a Daisy Picot double stitch on either side of that little ring which makes it much easier to coax it to sit nicely to the outside. I enjoyed playing with with pattern and encourage all of you to follow the link to admire Jane's tatted version. BTW, Fox, did you notice the beads? I'm practicing.

2 Doilies Finished

I've finished two of Jon Yusoff's Merriment Doilies in white, size 20. Some of you may remember that I'm working on some small white doilies for wedding presents. I'm a little over half finished with another white one using Anne Bruvold's Dragonwing Doily pattern.

I've also found some time to play with this week's online tatting lesson (Jeanne Lugert's instructions on alternating colors in Daisy picots), review Miranda's notes comparing the Maltese ring and Daisy picots, and play around with the two techniques. I missed the classroom session, but worked with Jeanne's instructions. While it didn't look to me like it could possibly work, I followed her instructions carefully and there it was--a flower with the daisy picots in alternating colors! Many thanks to Jeanne and Georgia for sharing the technique with us. It's fun to try new things.

I'm currently working on one of Jane Eborall's butterflies in which one seems to use some of both techniques (Maltese rings & Daisy picots). I've emailed Jane to see if I'm working it correctly. Once I finish the tatting and make sure I've correctly interpreted the instructions, I'll show it to you.

Happy tatting!