Busy Shuttles

Doily Progress: My doily design is in a folder for another time. My daughter decided she'd really like one made with repeated motifs instead of in rounds. Not feeling like designing a square at the moment, I let her choose between Cherie Wheeler's Cecelia Doily (square on left) and Roger aka Freedman's square (on right). We agreed upon Cherie's doily and I'm eager to get it started. The X's work up quickly and easily in one round each.

Mini Cross Variations: This cross makes a nice little bookmark all by itself, but I also want to use it on the end of the "tail" of other bookmarks. It turns even a little strip of edging into a nice cross bookmark when you tat a tail and put the cross on the end. And since I need a lot of them in a hurry, I thought I'd simplify the pattern while rewriting it to climb out of either end. The result is 3 variations on the same basic stitch counts making the pattern much more versatile for me.

More Flowers: Dancers need an appreciative audience so meet the "Applause Flower" sitting on the sidelines with lots of enthusiasm. And lastly, there is "Justa Flower" whose leaves were formed by making a double picot and then "turning" them in opposite directions.

The start of a new doily.

When my oldest daughter was in her early teens and still a fairly new tatter, I participated in my first doily round robin. Sarah really wanted to get in on the fun so I suggested she and I do a little round robin of our own. The lavender and white doily is one of our finished pieces. Using size 30 thread, it measures approximately 6 inches. Now many years later, she has asked me to tat a rectangular doily for her and I thought it would be rather special to use some of the elements of the doily we made together in this new piece. It would be very easy to turn it into a square, but she needs something a little wider than it is tall for this particular table. Here you see the original piece and the new center for the rectangle. I really like the mask-like appearance of the new center.

Motif #11 and doily in progress

Motif #11: My daisy picots are looking better! I still have a bit of trouble with the last if those picots closing up tighter than the first, but this heart looks much neater than my last. The link to the pattern is in my last post.

Doily Progress: My oldest daughter has been wanting a slightly rectangular doily for over a year and I decided to finally get busy on it. I'm reworking a circular roundrobin pattern she and I created when she was in her early teens. Split rings and rings off chains made it possible to do the first three rounds all in one CTM round (that is, if I hadn't run out of thread on the shuttles!). Problem solving is so much fun to me. Making this round doily into a rectangle is offering a nice challenge--so much more fun than just working a pattern! Our original was done in lavender and white, but this one is in ecru and white.

The dog I was working on is in the UFO pile for now.

Happy tatting!