It’s been a while since I’ve worked on the pattern for Section 1 of the Tea Cloth, but I finally went back and added notes to all the pictures, added some new pictures and generally went through and updated the pattern.  I have some emails out to potential test tatters and a few more to send.  Hopefully, it won’t be long till I have a finished version of the pattern published.

I’m pretty excited about this piece.  It’s going to be on display at LACIS in Berkley, CA at their Tatting Exhibit this summer.  I drove through Berkley in December on my way to San Diego and got a sneak peak at the exhibit while I dropped off my piece.  I’m pretty sure they still hadn’t collected most of what will be on display and it was already an amazing collection.  I can’t wait to see it once it’s actually up and am so excited to be a small part of it.

Of course, this piece that I’ve tatted is only the first (and smallest) section of a MUCH bigger piece.  It’s the tea cloth from Priscilla Tatting Book #2.  The green and yellow piece I mentioned a couple weeks ago is the next section of it.  I’ve seen a version of it at the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale, CA that takes it through section 3 (that was a couple years ago, so I’m not sure if it’s still on display.  Does anyone know?)  Wodentoad on Craftree is doing an amazing job at consistent steady progress and is on the last section of it.  I can’t wait to see how it comes out!  Here’s a link to the forum thread about her progress, though I think you need to log into Craftree to be able to read it.

As I usually do, I’ve been bouncing around with different versions of this project (as well as many other tatting projects).  I’ve got a least 7 versions of the tea cloth started, all in different stages.  One day, I’ll have to collect them all together and snap some pictures.  Some I’ll finish eventually, but some are just trial runs as I am modifying the pattern as I go to make it work for me and for modern techniques and tatting.

Getting this draft of the pattern put together is pretty exciting to me.  I’ve had this goal of rewriting the patterns from the Priscilla Tatting Books and I’ve been working on it for the last few years, but this is the first pattern where I feel like I’ve actually gotten down a work-flow for making the samples, taking and editing the pictures and putting together the patterns.  Hopefully future patterns (from the Priscilla books and others) won’t take me as long to put together now that I’ve figured out a process that works for me!

If you’re interested in test tatting, please let me know in the comments or by sending me an email to jessica(at)snapdragonlace.com

This is one of the project we did at Camp Wannatat last month. It’s Dora Young pattern that Heidi Nakamura rewrote and taught.

I realize as I try to describe it that I don’t know if I should call it a doily or a motif.  When does a motif become a doily?  Is it the physical size of the finished piece or the number of rounds?  This one is done all in one round, but it’s about 7 inches wide, done with a Snapdragon Lace size 3 hand dyed thread and black. Why size 3?  I really don’t know. I wanted to do a HDT and while choosing I just sort of gravitated to them for something different. I know a lot of people don’t like size 3, but I think it definitely has it’s place.

I was also thinking of doing it in size 80, just to see what that would look like.  If I did, the final piece would only be a couple inches wide. Would that make it a motif?

Now that I’m back from Shuttlebirds and Camp Wannatat, I’m finally able to do some tatting on whatever happens to strike my fancy, rather than whatever has to be done for upcoming events. I’m sure I’ll write more later about the two events as I digest all the new ideas (I’ll be at it for a while as I learned and saw so many new things!)

On this lovely spring day in Seattle, I’m hanging out in the backyard with the dog, working on the tea cloth from Priscilla Tatting Book #2. I’m trying to do the inserts between the panels of the second section and am coming to the conclusion that I should have done these pieces before the panels.

They’re made up of 4 connected motifs surrounded by rings and chains that connect them to the panels. It’s that ring and chain portion that I’m doing now and it’s not that it’s hard in any way, it’s just hard to track if you’re joining it both to the set of motifs and the panels in the same round.

Since these pieces are only connected to the panels and not the inner set of rounds, it would be easier to just make the right pieces and then join to the panels while doing those.

So that’s how I’ll write the pattern and that’s how I’ll try it next time. Yes. There will be a next time. In fact, in the process of writing this pattern I’ll probably end up with a couple of these. Hopefully all of them can be tatted in such nice weather.

I’ll leave you with a picture of the dog enjoying the sunshine.