Another Butterfly

Isn't this a happy little guy? He just looks like, "Ta-DA! I'm a butterfly!" He is, of course, "Seven" by Sherry Pence from her book "The Exquisite Collection of Tatted Butterflies".
Sherry's original version has the rings one color and the chains a contrasting color, which is very striking. However, being a lazy soul, I worked this pattern all in one color (DMC size 80 in purple variegated). Oh, and it wasn't her idea to tie mismatched knots in the antennae -- that was just me. I was only going to tie a knot in the ends, but they didn't match. So, I thought, "Well, I could tie one higher on this side and one lower on that side." No I couldn't. And I tried it twice! I thought about tying another at the bottom of the left antennae and cutting off the top -- but figured the poor guy would soon end up with no antennae at all!

Hippopotami

Aren't they sweet? Tat it and See -- a hippopotamus! Jane Eborall's newest creature has been fun to make. It's been really interesting to note how many people all over the world were working on this pattern. I missed a picot on the third day, but didn't discover it until the seventh day. Drat. I started over with the DMC size 80 orange variegated thread. I left it at home one day, but happened to have a pair of shuttles wound with one strand of Gütermann white quilting thread and one strand of Signature pink ombre machine embroidery thread. So, of course I started again to catch up. My nieces recommended the blue eye for the pink hippo, but I picked black for the orange guy.

Butterfly One - Version One Pattern

First version of the first butterfly. For those of you that can work from a diagram, I hope this one is sufficient. If there's something really confusing, leave me a comment and I'll see if I can clarify. I think this .jpg ends up being fairly large, too. Again, using Firefox, you can print preview it then tell it to print landscape and fit to the page. I still don't know what any other browser might do, but believe they should have something similar. If you are a member of Here-Be-Tatters or eTatters, I've posted a .pdf file of this image in both places. If you can't get something usable, leave a comment and we'll figure something out -- unless the reason it's not usable is there are no text instructions. I don't want to do those. :)
Oh -- I just realized none of these patterns say to use two shuttles. I do it as a matter of habit.

Tat It and See

Tat it and See by Jane Eborall
How much fun is a do it day-by-day pattern without knowing what you're making? Ask just about anybody in the tatting world! I was copying the pattern every day, and was finally able to catch up through day 7. I'm thinking I should have twisted my very long picot a bit more -- or else my whatisit is standing in a very strong windstorm. I chose DMC size 80 in an orange ombre. My reasoning behind this was diabolical. Actually, it was because that's what happened to be on top of the bag. I'm looking forward to the next installment. I'm thinking ...hmmmm... decoration for a baby boy's tie-dyed onsie. :)

Butterfly Two Pattern

Some of the tatters from Here-Be-Tatters were interested in trying these butterflies from the diagrams I made for myself. You better believe if I had made them for general distribution, I wouldn't have put in a sample with the threads just tied and hanging there! I think if you click on this image it will come up large enough to print -- drat, it's huge. This is the advantage of Firefox, you can print preview it then tell it to print landscape and fit to the page. I don't know what any other browser might do. If someone wants it and it just won't print, leave a comment, and I'll see what I can do about making it smaller. Also, just to be certain I don't leave any one out, I've posted the .pdf file in the Here-Be-Tatters file section and in a discussion on eTatters.

Butterflies for Baby

Since I'm off to a baby shower tomorrow -- it was about time to get this finished. The lace is finally sewn on and down. I found that things which are going through the washer and dryer tend to curl up and must be completely tacked down if they are not to need a lot of ironing. And, who in their right mind irons anything, especially baby clothes? Certainly not me!
My sister, of course, tie-dyed this baby onsie in an all-over crumple using (I think) three shades of pink. That yellowish cast on the right sleeve is only from my picture taking inability. The neck decoration is made from a little bit of my butterfly bookmark pattern and an approximation of some butterfly edging I saw somewhere and couldn't find. (It's probably in that collection of stuff I downloaded at work and haven't brought home yet -- so it's not in my PDFPick.) If you look closely, you might be able to see the two tiny pink scrapbook buttons in the central butterflies. I used one strand of Signature pink ombre machine embroidery thread and one strand of Gütterman white sewing cotton, so the thread size approximates DMC 80 tatting cotton.

Butterfly Six

I still have that ball of yellow DMC Cébélia size 30, so I made another butterfly. This one worked quite well right from the beginning I only made a couple of changes in the center of the upper wing and the head. The upper wings did turn out to be a lot more uplifted than horizontally stretched as I had sketched the pattern. It looks okay to me, though -- it seems happier and less moth-ish. After doing a second one in the yellow Cébélia to make the change to the head and check the stitch count for the change in the center of the upper wing, I tried it with Coats cotton quilting thread. I had a lot of difficulty getting the 6 ds rings to close in the clovers of the lower wings. If I did this again in small thread, I think I might just use a single ring on top of those chains instead of the clover. I wanted to try some Sulky machine embroidery rayon thread, but decided against it after the problems with the Coats and worrying about stretching the rayon. So, I wound the rayon thread with some DMC size 80 purple and made another one. It's the same size as the ones made of the size 30 thread!
I never did remember to put the magic threads in; I just tied knots in the thread ends and cut them off. Then I couldn't find my fabric glue -- I suspect it is holding a crayon art project together somewhere in the house. Good thing these are just trials because I also made the mistake of thinking it wouldn't matter if I put them on my styrofoam starch board without its customary pillowcase covering. Wrong. They've got bits of styrofoam stuck to them. Pattern pieces -- they are pattern pieces (but it still makes me grumbly when I do goofy things like that)!

OH! -- Happy New Year, everyone!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

This is our downstairs tree. It has 72 satin-wrapped styrofoam ornaments covered with tatting, and about a dozen small tatted snowflakes, one crocheted "pineapple" butterfly, and one green wooden tree ornament with "Marty" on it in calligraphy -- those are the ones I've made over the years. It has six glass ornaments covered with blue crochet and a dozen silver crocheted snowflakes -- those a good friend made. It has three clay ornaments -- a sock, a Santa, and a dove -- that my sister made, and the two glass pigs she gave us. Other than the two "sisters" snow-woman ornaments we bought, everything else is a gift that has special meaning.
I started making the covered ornaments (many years ago) with the idea of giving them as gifts. I did give quite a few away -- but only if I had duplicates. There are no real patterns for these, so I used each ornament as a pattern for another. Most of the early ones were doilies or snowflakes from pattern books with one less repeat -- to encourage them to bowl to fit the ornament. At the point I decided it might be a good idea to have patterns I had forgotten which books I used and which patterns I had adapted. I keep meaning to sit down with the box of ornaments and my pile of books to see if I can match them up -- but I can't find my round tuit.

Butterfly Five

Still not even close to using up a whole ball of yellow DMC Cébélia size 30 -- I did another couple of practice butterflies. Had the first one been a sentence, it would have been overly wordy. Once I could see it wasn't going to properly behave, I stopped and cut off the thread in frustration. On to the second trial. Yes, that worked much better. Being pleased with it, I made the smaller one in Coats pastels quilting thread. I left it for a long time thinking it was done and started working on another pattern. Just about the time I was going post it as butterfly four, I decided it was too square.
The next incarnation was made in Coats jewel tones quilting thread -- it's wings are slightly different from each other. It looked more like a water skeeter to me, but not disgustingly so. In fact, I liked it so much I just went on and did the next one with a few additional modifications. The final one I like quite well -- even if it, too, has a small waist and looks a little skeeterish. Maybe these will have to be butterflies 5a and 5b -- because now I've decided I like the square one after all. One thing I will have to do for this pattern is get a better picot gauge for the antennae. I used a package of needles and the cardboard was a little mushy. Might just as well have eyeballed 'em, they're so uneven!
The next job is diagramming what I actually did instead of what I thought would work for at least four of the five butterflies. My working patterns have more scribbles than even I can read. Might be best to just start over with new diagrams!

Butterfly Four

More of that yellow Cébélia size 30. This is a butterfly in profile -- by default. I started it as a butterfly with wings on both sides. By the time I got done with the first side (after taking out some chains, believe it or not) there was no way to finish the other. The poor butterfly body was bent in half. There's just too much going on in those wings. If I hadn't put this on the starch board and stretched the bejabbers out of it there's no way it would be flat. Maybe the pattern can be salvaged, but right now it needs too many changes and I've lost interest in it. Maybe later I will look over my diagram and figure out what to remove and where to change the joins and how many fewer stitches it needs. Yeah, later -- maybe next year or the year after or ...