An entire year of tatting over - and a new project

This week I realised that I have now been tatting for a year (plus a week or two).  To "celebrate" I'm thinking of digging out all the tatting I've done that I still have and taking a picture of it all together in one place.
Until I get that done, here is a pic from 11 months and 14 days ago which would be about a month after I started tatting...

I've started a new project today - but what it is going to be is a secret for now so that the friends for whom its a present don't find out too soon...
But at the moment you can't tell what it is yet so I'm safe for now :)

The motif on the left will become the middle and will have another 5 copies of the motif on the right.  I'm going to have a little think now about whether to follow the original instructions and cut and tie each one or to see if I can be clever with split rings and climbing out because I really don't like sewing in ends :)
Looking at this picture reminds me that I still struggle with larger rings ;)  With this piece I have the extra difficulty in that I'm trying to keep the tension lighter than normal because I want the finished item to be fairly soft so I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about how tightly I draw up the rings when I close them so that I can keep them a consistent size.  Not tatting too late into the evening will also help as my tension definitely gets worse the later I tat.

This is alongside the current TIAS and working on a long length of some simple tatted trimming.

I'm still here...

I'm not very good at keeping up with blogging it seems!

But I am still tatting and I've joined in with this autumn's Tat it and See (TIAS) which is hosted by Lady Shuttlemaker on her blog with a shared blog with  the results at http://tiaspence.blogspot.co.uk/.  Here's my latest TIAS post.

Last weekend was a long weekend with no tatting because I had this to distract me:

  and this:

and a LOT of this:

Yes I spent a long weekend dog-sitting so that my brothers could take Dad out for a big weekend treat.
Now that I'm back I need to get on with tatting more white trimmings for an Edwardian outfit.

(update) I just looked at the dates of my posts and I've realised my rate of posting drops off suddenly in May so I can blame most of it on getting distracted by the shiny new tablet I bought that month. I've never owned a smart phone so having a gadget like that is quite distracting...  but very handy for the TIAS.

So many distractions...

I've been distracted by a lot of things over the last couple of months.  I did tat some lace for a new Edwardian-style blouse but the blouse itself went a bit wrong so no pictures of that until I have time to make a replacement blouse - serves me right for making the tatting for it before I actually made the blouse!
Next weekend I will be part of the WWI weekend at Lincoln Castle, mostly as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing assistant. Only 4 buttons left to sew onto my VAD uniform!
The weekend after that I will be part of the Edwardian themed weekend at Papplewick Pumping Station where I probably will be doing some tatting as long as I remember to fill up the right kind of shuttles (Edwardians did not have bobbin shuttles with plastic bobbins).
Then 1 free weekend before its The Asylum at Lincoln.  1 weekend to recover then its off for a weekend of dog-sitting where I definitely won't get any tatting done :)

Victorian edging patterns

I realised at the last Victorian weekend that I needed more samples using Victorian tatting patterns.

 Top two are really simple off the top of my head patterns and probably really similar to ones I've read somewhere in the various old tatting books.  They're using ecru thread not yellow - that's just my photo :)

The bottom one is from the Mlle Riego Royal Tatting book and is called "Lilly of the Valley pattern". This is my first attempt at this pattern and it even features the first bit of crochet I've done in years!  I felt my crochet was a bit too wobbly so on the right half of the top edging I've gone for a tatted chain instead.  It will hopefully look less wobbly if I press it.

In the mood for tatting this week

After yesterday's homage to women's suffrage here's some more tatting I did this evening.

At the top is a variant on yesterday's pattern only this time done the normal way with just one thread. It's a bit wriggly at the moment because it hasn't been damped and flattened yet.

At the bottom is and the right : a 2-layer flower pattern from cariad-tatting.co.uk, and on the left is a variant on Rose and Leaf from This 'n' Tat - it's supposed to have chains but I left bare thread instead so that I could do it with one shuttle.

All these are thread that arrived today - Carnivale and Purple Twist both Lizbeth.

Yesterday one of my friends pointed out that Green White Violet for Give Women Votes is a bit of a myth. She says

From 1908 the WSPU adopted the colour scheme of purple, white and green: purple symbolised dignity, white purity, and green hope. These three colours were used for banners, flags, rosettes and badges, and appeared in newspaper cartoons and postcards. Mappin & Webb, the London jewellers, issued a catalogue of suffragette jewellery for Christmas 1908.
In 1909 the WSPU presented specially commissioned pieces of jewellery to leading suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and Louise Eates. Some Arts and Crafts jewellery of the period incorporated the colours purple, white and green using enamel and semi-precious stones such as amethysts, pearls, and peridots. However jewellery that incorporated these stones was already quite common in women's jewellery during the late 19th century, before 1903 and could not be connected with the suffragettes, before the WSPU adopted the colours.

However in my piece of tatting the colours do stand for Give Women Votes :) 
(WSPU stands for Womens Social and Political Union)

I'm fighting the urge to order yet more thread already - I hadn't noticed the Scottish Thistle variegated lizbeth thread which should be much easier to use for purple/white/green tatting than trying to juggle three separate threads. Postage costs have gone up lately now so placing a small order is too expensive so it'll have to wait until I succumb to more colours.

In memory of Womens Suffrage

Just over a week ago I was acting the role of a suffragette so I decided it would be nice to do some tatting in suffrage colours - Green White and Violet which stand for Give Women Votes.
(and before I forget - a link to some photos of that weekend courtesy of Lincoln's local newspaper)

I got the threads yesterday and after a lot of thinking yesterday evening this is what I came up with this evening:

It's 3 cm wide. The threads are all lizbeth 20 and are Leaf Green, Natural and Antique Violet light. Three threads, three shuttles, 6 ends to sew in :(
The green isn't as bright in real life as in this picture.

Now I've got this out of the way I can get on with what I should have been doing!

Recent tatting

I said I had done some tatting and here it is...

At the top is some Etruscan braid from a Mlle Riego book - it's also in a Mary Konior book where she gives the directions for the corner.  This is going to be the edging for a tray cloth for Victorian/Edwardian re-enactment.  It's in size 16 Puppets Eldorado thread.

In the middle is more Etruscan braid, this time in size 40 Anchor mercer. This is the piece I was tatting in public over last weekend (a bank holiday weekend) during the Victorian Weekend at Lincoln Castle.  This will probably become trimming for the cuffs of my next Edwardian-style blouse.

At the bottom is Curds and Whey from one of Mary Konior's books, again in size 40 Anchor mercer.  After the first few repeats I switched to front-side/back-side tatting and that is making it lie much flatter than the first portion.