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 ...

Butterfly Three

Again with the yellow Cébélia size 30 (maybe I can use the whole ball this way) I made the first attempt at this butterfly. It wasn't working quite the way I wanted, so the second wing is actually the second attempt. That seemed to work better so I made another one to be certain, and, after finishing, decided on a better place to reverse to work up the other side of the wing. The third one, in Coats pastel quilting thread was working really well -- right up to the end. I went to pull in the ending threads and pulled the magic thread out instead. The poor thing has a knot and a bit of fabric glue on the back. Then I thought, "Ha! The problem is where I'm starting." The fourth one (in Coats jewel quilting thread) started in a different place so that I could end with a split ring and make crocheted antennae. Ta-da! No thread ends to hide.

Butterfly Two

This is one of the "ewwww, that's icky" patterns reworked until I like it pretty well. The first one in Cébélia size 30 has no form to its body, but I rather liked the way the wings were working. Again with the size 30 I tried a new body and a bit of modification to the wings. Yes, that was better. Next I thought I'd try it in purple Coats quilting thread. Oops. I forgot a couple of picots -- can't hook a wing to its head! The first little one is, therefore, not a butterfly. It has no butter. It's just a fly. Try again. Rats, I did the bottom ring in the wrong sequence --again-- which made the chain joins down there weird. Still, it looks pretty good and I decided where the "magic threads" had to go. The final one is in Coats pastel variegated quilting thread. I didn't use the magic threads because this one is going on my jeans bag as well. I might try another one and reduce the size of the first set of chains on the bottom wing because it's just a bit squarish looking -- but mostly I like it.

Butterfly One

Progression of the middle butterfly... The first incarnation in yellow Cébélia size 30 had too much going on in the center -- lots of chains to get the thread back to where I wanted to go without cutting (not to mention the halves didn't match). The second incarnation moves the thread in a better way to get all around this butterfly in one pass. That seemed to work, so I tried in in Coats rainbow quilting thread. Then I had this brainstorm in thinking that I could do the whole thing using a chain to connect the bits and just join the chain at the end. That also works, but gives a totally different look to the center. I left the long threads on the last one so I can sew it on my Treasures from Trash bag. The others will probably go into a little pile of "dunno, I'll decide what to do with that some other time." I'm working on a new one now and have two others in the "ewww that's icky" stage. Still, its possible the patterns can be altered enough to be not icky.

Wasting thread

That's what I've been doing. When I couldn't tat, I was making all these complicated butterfly patterns -- without stitch counts. Wow, they look great on paper. Ewww. Not so good after I tried actually making them. The first one is a total no-go! I thought the second one had hope if I changed some things. I started to do that, and goofed on the second ring, so I just made the plain little butterfly -- which would have been better without the Josephine rings on the wings. Of course, the fact that they are yellow doesn't help. Maybe I just better get Ruth's and Sherry's books! The really good thing is I'm getting my fingers back.