Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Failure

When motif 28 didn't lie flat at my first attempt, I thought it was because I'd made the picots in the centre part too long. I flattened the motif with an iron, but it's not good. So I had another go, with tiny picots. Hmm. Even worse! Any ideas what the problem is?

Monday, May 30, 2016

Bit Fiddly

Motif 27 is made in five separate steps, so it's a bit fiddly, but I like the resulting oval shape. This motif, like yesterday's one, is quite small, 12 cm X 7 cm in size 20 thread.

Diamond

I like the shape of motif 26. Once again, the second round changes the basic circle shape.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Small

This motif is small but not absolutely straight forward. You have to tat the little outer flowers separately first and then join them to the main motif as you go. It's a rather floppy motif but would be pretty sewn onto something.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Motif 24

It's clever how the designer has changed the shape from a circle to oval in the final round. I think this motif would've been harder for me if I hadn't done the earlier ones and learnt how to cope with long picots and bare spaces. Unlike yesterday's motif, I didn't have to 'go around again'.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Doing the Shuttle Shuffle


It may look innocuous, but with rings on chains in two colours, motif 23 is possibly the most complicated pattern I've ever tatted! This is my second attempt. The first attempt is a monstrosity that will have to be binned:
One interesting point is that it illustrates the importance of tension in tatting. I shortened the inner chains for the second attempt and there's a much better fit.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Motif 22

I had to keep my wits about me for this one, with onion rings and rings on chains, but take it step by step and it was fine.  The inner round makes a pretty, small motif too:


Monday, May 23, 2016

Colourways


I tatted motif 21 in different colourways in an attempt to show the structure off better. I thought the idea of tatting the little flowers (brick colour in the top picture and white in the bottom one) separately to begin with sounded like a hassle. But actually it went fine and the technique of joining those flowers up as I went along worked well. I quite liked the orange colour blips in the second one, but I avoided them in the outer round by using Catherine Wheel Joins.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Tension

In  knitting, a big deal is made of tension - if you don't knit to the same tension as the designer, the garment might not work. Every pattern tells you to test your tension before you begin. In tatting, tension is seldom mentioned. Yet it can affect the appearance of the work and sometimes whether  elements will join smoothly. This motif works fine, but my tighter tension makes it look a little different to the original picture. Or perhaps it's just that I made my picots smaller than the original.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Level 2

When I first paged through the book, this was the pattern that really grabbed my attention. If I'd been picking and choosing, instead of working through the book, I'd probably have started here. It's a straight forward tat, with no bare threads or long picots. I made some silly mistakes near the beginning. Luckily I remembered my own advice to snip rings not chains and fixed them without too much difficulty. I used size 20 Anchor thread, white like the picture in the book. It measures about 18 cm or 7 inches across.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Getting the hang of Teiko Fujito's style

This is the last motif in the 'one shuttle' section. That it went smoothly is due in no small part to the motifs I've tatted before it. I'm getting the hang of long picots and bare threads, I think. It's a pretty motif, I like it.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Seventeen

This is not perfect, but I don't like the motif well enough to redo it!

The Semicircle Test

This is motif 16. I added teeny tiny picots just up from the base of the rings in the centre round, to make the centre more stable. I did half of the second round and then looked at it carefully to make sure I'd gone half way round the circle:
Mmm, no. If I'd carried on, there's no way the round would've lain flat. So I snipped the round off and started again, making the picots between the big rings longer - making them 13 mm long, to be exact.
Check again after half the round - better. That saved me a bit of tatting. I see I have fudged a little bit with the bare spaces - the long thread to complete the round really jumps out at you from the top picture.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Two in One

It's a little puzzling that motif 14 is in the one shuttle section but requires two shuttles! It forms the centre of the next motif:
I must say that if I'd been picking and choosing motifs from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito, I probably wouldn't have chosen this one. But I really like the way it turned out. I think a darker thread shows the design off better than the pale thread of the book.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Thirteen

Motif 13 on the 13th of the month, aha.  I used mock rings for this little motif, as I did with motif 11.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Take Two

Motif 12 is trickier than it looks. The one on the left is my first attempt. I blocked it into submission, but the centre is way overcrowded. Take two on the right is not perfect, but a lot better.

A word on the thread I'm using: in November last year, I dyed a lot of small skeins, trying to get the right colour for a pair of earrings, as you can read here. I was trying out different proportions of the same dyes, so the resulting colours are related and go well together. They work well for these small, multicolour motifs, I  think.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Of Challenge and Diversion

I've joined the 25 motif challenge to help me keep focus on getting through The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito in a year.  There's a link to the website on the left sidebar.  I've got off to a flying start, but I know that life and other projects will crop up along the way. Like this small diversion to crochet woolly hats for my granddaughters in Australia.
I used Sherry's Basic Hat Pattern from Ravelry, but had to adapt it a bit to allow for using thinner handspun wool and a smaller needle. The last hat I made for Isabel is too floppity and falls off, so I made turned the edges of these hats in to make a casing and threaded elastic through. That should hold them in place.


Monday, May 9, 2016

Mock Rings

Motif 11 is a little daunting because the rings in the outer row are so large -  37 ds. I had some thread left on the shuttle after the second round, so I did some experimenting. I tatted a normal ring, self closing mock ring and two mock rings joined to an inward picot at the start. Two of the true mock rings because even though it's the best option, you have to be careful to snug the ds up as you go, not wait until the end of the chain before pushing them along. I think the experimenting paid off, I was more confident by the time I tackled the outer round. Here's a photo of the start of a mock ring, with a safetypin holding the inward picot open:
I used the shoelace trick to change the direction of the chain before starting the mock ring. The chains themselves are long too, and there again it's important to snug the stitches up as you go.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Page Ten

These motifs are classified as one-shuttle designs, but they require a ball thread for the chains. One interesting point about the book (The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito) is that the photographs sometimes differ from the diagrams. In the first motif, the diagram shows the top rings as separate, whereas the photo shows them joined. I followed the photo to make the motif more stable. In motif 8, top right in this photo, the diagram shows the picots of the centre rings joined, whereas in the photo they are loose, which gives the middle a fluffier look.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Motif 6

This is motif 6 from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito. I had a couple of false starts on this one. On my first attempt to tat the motif, there was no way I could 'square the circle'; there was a big gap between last ring and first. I adjusted the length of the picots and bare spaces are tried again. Fine. I did two motifs and then realised I didn't have enough matching thread for 8 motifs. I could've joined the motifs in a different way, but I rather like this arrangement shown in the book, it's unusual. So I started again. I like it. This is the last of the 'one shuttle only' motifs, I think.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Measured

I worked the one on the left eyeballing the bare spaces. On the second one I used a piece of folded paper to measure them:
Worth the slightly longer time taken? I don't think so. It might be necessary for longer bare spaces, but with this length it wasn't too difficult to get them consistent.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Motif 4

Long picots and bare thread spaces give this a very spidery look. I used picot gauges for the long picots, two different sizes. I use bits of cardboard for gauges.

Variations


Designs 2 and 3 are essentially the same, with different stitch counts. Of course, the little rosettes can be joined in different ways in both cases.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Start At The Very Beginning

'The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito' has been calling to me ever since it arrived in February. I paged through it yesterday and wondered where to begin. The beginning, of course, just as the song says. I'm going to work my way through the book. The motifs are numbered; I shall follow the numbers.
The book is structured so that it begins with one shuttle patterns and then progresses to two shuttles and then three. There's not a lot of text, it relies mostly on diagrams:



It's one of those motifs that looks simple but isn't easy to get right.
The little motif on the left is my first attempt. It cups, as you can see. I didn't think carefully enough about what changes were required in order for it to lie flat, so my second attempt is considerably worse! The third one was good enough for me to continue. Getting the picot lengths and bare thread spaces correct is key. That's true for many of the patterns in the book, so I'm hoping that by starting at the first motif, I will gain the experience I need to do the more complicated designs later.