Exactly What I Feared

I have almost finished the doily that I posted about the other day. The pattern is from Tatted Doilies by Iris Niebach. It is the pattern called Beatrice. This book is available from Handy Hands as well as other places I expect. The thread is Heather Johnston's Melamine in size 30.

As you can see it is not finished and may never be unless I can find some more thread. I have placed arrows at points of interest

1. spot where I am stopped

2. is the shuttle thread - only 14" left

3. is the ball thread - only 13" left.

not enough to finish, so close and yet so far.

The thread is Heather Johnston's Melamine in size 30, if anyone has some they are willing to part with I would be most grateful. I only need about 1.5 yards to be sure that I can add in and finish and hid the ends.

Worst case, I have to un-tat the last 2 repeats and see if I can get a 7 point doily to lay flat as opposed to the 8 point doily in the pattern. That is a chore better left for another day and as I said a last resort.

in my previous post I mentioned that I was going to post about the flower I tatted with petals that alternated color. I still plan to do that, but we have had to turn off the computer due to severe thunderstorms for part of the weekend and have had intermittent internet service when it was safe to have the computer on.

back on track

First up tonight is a pretty little shuttle I received in the mail today. It is from Noreen Crone-Findlay. The same gal who interview Sherry Pence - ladyshuttlemaker. She makes several different style of shuttles.
This little hedgehog shuttle is only 1.5" long. just what I was looking for.

While I was making the Daisy Picot Stars for my daughter's wedding, I was doing a lot of finger tatting with a long strand of thread. It was a bit tiring, so did some thinking and realized that I needed a small shuttle to use just for finger tatting. It didn't need to hold a lot of thread, but be easy to wind, and handle.

So I went looking for the right size shuttle. I talked to Noreen and she was very pleasant to work with and the upshot is this very smart good looking tiny shuttle. It came in the mail today, and as soon as I got home from work, I wound some of the thread on it that was left on another shuttle and tatted a flower using the daisy picot method. The shuttle worked great! Thanks Noreen. It made it so much easier to finger tat the flower. I do a fair amount of SCMR Butterflies as well, and this will work very well for them too.

The color changes on the picots really worked out nicely, although I hadn't originally planned them. They occurred because I alternated between direct tatting the daisy picots and flip tatting them. Something that I discovered while tatting the Daisy Picot Stars. I will post this on my patterns blog.

Now I will show you the doily I meant to the other day. Here is the Beatrice doily by Iris Niebach. I have been wanting to tat some of her work and this turned out to be a good time as any. I volunteered to tat an item for a charity auction for Heather of Tarnished Tatter fame. She had a friend who is dealing with breast cancer and wanted to help raise money.
The thread that I am using is Melamine in size 30 by Heather. She has some interesting colorways available in her etsy shop.



The box in this scan below shows how much of the doily I had to retro-tat but once that was finished and the stitches redone, I was off and running last night. only 2 & a half repeats to go.

Gotta get some supper quick then off to watch the Vikings play while tatting on this doily.