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.

Bouquets and baby birds

I survived the hurried trip to Omaha this weekend. While the wedding isn't until November, I wanted to show you how the tatted stars were used in the flower arrangements for the wedding. we used silk flowers and blue accents. The colors are very deep and rich, the photos don't do the colors justice except for the one of the bridesmaids bouquets. There are Hydrangeas, roses, and a bunch of others. We bought out all the deep red from 1 of the Hobby Lobby's in Omaha.

This first photo is of the Mother's corsages, you can see 3 tiny white tatting stars in each. I will be posting the pattern for the small white tatted stars to my pattern blog in the next couple of hours, if you click over and it isn't there yet, check back a bit later.

This second photo is of the Brides Bouquet. There are 11 tiny white tatted stars in it. It is not finished and maybe pulled apart and done over, it is good, but not perfect, since there are 4 mos left until the wedding, there is time to figure out what isn't just right.

This third photo is of the Bridesmaid's bouquets. On the handles you can see the tatted initials and the small red tatted flowers. The pattern for the small red flowers is available on my pattern blog. The Maid of Honor's bouquet is on the right, her small red flower has 6 petals instead of the 5 in the rest, mainly because I goofed and didn't count right, but it also sets hers off from the other gal who has the same initial.

There are small tatted white stars in the grooms boutonniere, but that picture is a bit fuzzy, I didn't realize that I was shaking when I took it.

This 4th photo is of the arrangements for behind the altar in the church. The colors should be as deep and rich as the photo of the bridesmaids above.

And last but not least is an up date on the baby bird. He has gotten much bigger. I have never had a really good look at mama, she is very fast off the nest and the leaves cover it up unless I lift them out of the way to take the baby's picture, but I did get a better glimpse at her yesterday. She is medium to dark grey on the top and creamy on the bottom. her head is darker and she has a white stripe across her eyes. Her beak is sharper and longer then an oriole, so I am thinking maybe a Vireo? but then since I know so little of birds, I can be oh so very wrong.

Time to get moving, I need to get the pattern for the tiny white flowers written up and posted.