Hankies with Old and New Tatting...

There were three hankies with tatted edging I found while antiquing, I made myself put two of them back, I'm not even sure why as the edgings intriqued me...but this one came home with me...

It's very pretty, this multicolored edging.  I liked and was intriqued by the edging.  It really needs blocked...but I think you can see how pretty it is.

It's really lovely, I believe it is done in a size 70 thread...very delicate and lovely...all the adornment a simple white hankie needs.

And here is where I am with the new hankie from Diane...no where really...but you might be interested anyway...

This was my birthday gift to myself...

The edgings in this book are beautiful, and I really wanted to try one...

This one, called Snake Chains, looked like a perfect edging for this hankie...

...and then I tried it...and this thread does not like it.  Maybe it's just the way I tat...but this thread is not going to make it all the way down an edge doing chains...already very frayed after just a couple of turns...

But, I have my heart set, it seems, on tatting with this beautiful silvery green thread that matches so well...I tried today, but I could not convince myself to just do white...and anyway the snake chains pattern didn't look like it wanted to be attached on the go either, and I like to do it that way...

So...back to the books...perhaps this one from Tatting with Visual Patterns...I'll give it a try tomorrow.

Pillowcases and Trim on Little Girl Dresses...

Here is the second purchase I made on my antiquing jaunt...

I love these...I don't think pillowcases could be prettier.  The embroidery is gorgeous...

Angel Face
Floribunda

Reminds me of these roses!  Love the colors and the style...and the simple tatted edging on that beautifully curved edge...

...Well, the pictures speak for themselves.  These are just perfect.  The tatting is not overdone, but adds a beautiful detail.  The curved edge is simply lovely.  The embroidery gorgeous. 

I bought these both because I love this set and because I want very much to make some like this someday soon.  These are exactly the kind of thing I want for my home, for gifts, and just to make...because they are beautiful and fun and classic and they make my heart sing.

I love simple edgings, and that is exactly what this sweet...but a little bit too plain dress needs...

I'm using a size 10 ecru for this edging to do a simple ring and chain pattern.  It's nothing complicated or fancy...but it's exactly right for this dress. 

It needs the heavier weight of the larger thread to stand up to the floral pattern of the fabric.  I've finished the length of edging for the bodice, but am going to do a lenth to go around the skirt just above the ruffle.  I think the tatting will help the pretty details of this dress to stand out more.  The little ruffles just blend in at present. 

At any rate, I need to attach the finished piece today, I'm going to try attaching the picots on both sides of the edging and see if it stands up to washing better...we'll see.  Things for two year olds simply have to be washed.  They are beautiful, but messy, little creatures.  I'll be excited to finish this one so my little Rosie Posie can wear this.  It will be a fun addition to her summer wardrobe.

A Hankie with Pink Rosebuds Came in the Mail...

The mail came today, and brought a lovely little envelope from Diane so you are getting a second post from me today...simply because I had to share and could not wait...

She wrote that  her hope is that I will have fun with this hankie...and I will!  I am so excited about this!!!  The rose buds are perfect...so like a living rose...

Perfume Delight
Hybrid Tea

It is exquisite...I know Diane let us each choose one, and I loved this hankie in the picture on her blog...but, somehow, I am so much more delighted with this hankie than I had expected to be. 

The embroidery is incredibly delicate, the pinks and greens so soft and perfect...and the cotton so fine that it is nearly sheer, as you can see above.

Just incredibly exquisite...Thank you Diane! 

I must admit to having already gone through my thread stash.  I came up with a silver green that is a perfect match and a white of the same size.  Both are size 30 Clark's vintage threads.  I don't have a pink that looks at all right, the pinks in these rose buds have a coral tint to them that nothing I have quite matches.  However, I absolutely love that silver green...that will be fun to finally use if I do!  Depending on the border, I could go with just the green, the green and the white, or the white alone...

It is going to be so much fun to create a border for this incredibly beautiful hankie...and now I must go peruse some edging patterns for a while, deliberate colors a bit more, and add a few repeats to another hankie.

In the Course of Antiquing, some Tatting was Found...

Antiquing is a fun pastime on a rainy, cloudy, cold day...and my Birthday earlier this week fell on such a day.  So...I got to pick what we did...and antiquing we did go.

I enjoy browsing and looking at all manner of things old...the depression glass, tea cups, hankies, furniture, and many many other lovely things are just thoroughly pleasurable...but edgings and embroidery on linens have always been something I have loved.  This time it was with more interest perhaps than ever before.  Becoming a tatter myself has made me value even more what I see...and I looked more for that specific type of handiwork than I have in the past.  There were a few things I ran across that simply had to come home with me.

The first of these was this lovely dresser scarf...

The edging on this is simply lovely...very delicate, quite small thread...and the pattern resembles little flowers.   

In the picture above you can see the hand rolled edging, and the pretty detail of the openwork inside the edging is more visible below...both are beautifully done...

I think I would like to try this delicate little floral edging someday...it would be perfect on a hankie I think, it is simply a beautiful edging pattern.  The embroidery on this piece is noticeably less delicate.  While I like the embroidery, I don't feel that it matches the edging in style nor in color quite as beautifully as one might like (perhaps it was even done by a different person).  This is still a very pretty piece...something that someone, or perhaps a couple of someones, spent a great deal of time and effort on.

I truly like this...but I will say that the tatting is really what drew me in more than anything else.  I'm afraid I wanted to buy anything that had tatting on it...simply because it was tatting! 

I have another purchase to show you tomorrow...but first, here is where I am at with my own tatting...it is more than a little hard to admit that I have not made much progress with the hankie from Michelle, but in the course of my work on pruning back my roses I stuck my fingers with thorns and broke the nail on my left thumb clear down into the pink.  It actually hurt to tat for quite a number of days...does anyone else use their nail to hold the previous double knot and mark the lenth a picot is to be?...because apparently that is my way of doing things.

So, that is where the hankie is to date...I sincerely hope to do better this weekend...6 and 1/2 repeats is simply not much to show, even if I had to cut off the first two I showed you all previously! 

I do have one other active tatting WIP which I will try and show to you tomorrow though...something I'm working on for my little Rosie Posie.  My beautiful little daughter, who is now 2, calls the tatting I do for her "Wow Wow".  I think I would do anything for a "Wow Wow" fom her...

My Roses are Blooming Again...

My roses are finally beginning to bloom again.  These bring a great deal of happiness to my life.  I simply love roses, in any form, but particularly living, growing roses. They involve quite a bit of work in the Spring, and this is where a good part of my free time has been spent in recent days...hence the lack of tatting and other artistic endeavors.  


Betty Prior
Floribunda



Everything that died back over the winter must be cut off, fertilizer must be applied, the weeding and mulching done, and watering must occur...for all 38 bushes, 35 varieties in total.  You might say they have become a bit of an obsession, quite like tatting can be...



Tuscan Sun
Floribunda
Jackson & Perkins



Despite the work involved (which is truely more pleasure than pain), it is the saddest day of the year for me when they freeze in the Fall, and the happiest when they begin to bloom again in the early Summer...I enjoy looking at them, smelling them, photograph them, and arranging them in vases to bring inside and to share with friends...



This Lovely Thing
Came up from the root stock
of another...but it might be a keeper...

Roses are quite simply, my favorite thing in the world...and I thought I would share a few with all of you...


Oklahoma
Hybrid Tea

After all...many of you are friends, have recently become friends, or will become friends...and I like to share the beauty of these with my friends...

Moon Shadow
Hybrid Tea
Jackson & Perkins

Tomorrow, I have some tatting and embroidery to share with you...but today, I'll simply share my roses with you...

Sunsprite
Hybrid Tea



It's a Start to a Pretty Hankie Edging...

I thought I would share what I have decided to do with the hankie from Michelle...it's a start.  I haven't gotten very far yet...and I don't usually share things before they are completed.  It makes me nervous about peoples reactions more so than when the item is complete.  However, I thought I would give it a try.  It seems like a lot of other people share their ongoing work and the resulting comments provide encouragement for completion, so we'll just have to see how that "works" for me!  I will certainly need encouragement on this one...

I have done a single crochet edge to attach the tatting to, followed by a basic ring edging, which is to be topped off with Mary Konior's Asters edging from Tatting with Visual Patterns.  I like the white, it picks up the white details in the hanky while the lavendar accents the roses.  I am happy with this choice...but it is size 80 DMC thread...and it's going to take a while.  I think if I do 4 repeats a day, I'll be done in 12 days... 

The Asters edging attaches in multiples of 4, so I have to be careful that each side has a number of rings on the basic edging that is divisible by 4 or I'll have a big oops...oh, and don't count to closely in the above picture, I already miscalculated and had to cut this little bit of the Asters edging off.  The pattern starts at the last ring of the previous repeat so I should have started 3 rings in, not 4.  Despite that, this is what the hankie seemed to want and I like how it looks, so I am going to continue...it's a fun challenge :-)

A Cross for a Lovely Girl on her First Communion Day...

This Saturday we are going to be attending the First Communion of one of our beautiful nieces and I thought that a tatted cross bookmark for her Bible would be very appropriate...and hopefully something she will treasure for years to come.

I couldn't find exactly what I wanted for this...so I tweaked a few things to get what I think is something she will love and enjoy...

I found a cross bookmark pattern in Christmas Angels and Other Tatting Patterns by Monica Hahn...I love the overall design, but wanted it a little more lacy rather than with just three picots on each chain, and didn't quite like how much the chains overlap between each arm of the cross.  You can see this in the photo behind my finished cross below:

I had also seen Ruth Perry's easy cross variation of Beeton's edging here and a bookmark I tatted a while back that I know I had the pattern for but can only find a picture of one like it that Mary at Peachtree Cottage did, both of which I took some inspiration from.  At any rate, I modified it to my satisfaction by making the chains in the crook of the arm a bit shorter and adding a join where they meet up and by making the chains lacier by doing them with more picots as on the bookmark pattern I mentioned but cannot find. 

Here are a couple of additional pictures of the completed bookmark:

I used size 20 Lizbeth in Tropical Punch and Azalea Medium for this cross bookmark.  The charm at the end is something I saw someone somewhere do with their bookmarks too...thought it was cute and would appeal to a young girl.  I would like to try tatting this again and try some other things with variations on the picot count and the length of the chains.  It's a fun cross bookmark to tat, I enjoy the little flower motif that is created by the little rings.  This will be #8 in my 25 motif challenge.

A Pretty Cross using Clover motifs...

Here is another cross that my Grandmother enjoyed tatting...it is primarily repeated clover motifs and chains.  It has always looked like flowers with little butterflies flying at the corners to me. 

She did this cross in a number of different stitch counts.  If she had a pattern, it is not in what I have from her.  If anyone out there knows where the pattern came from, please let me know and I'll edit this to include that. This is one she did frequently and probably could have tatted in her sleep.  She may have simply adapted this from a clover edging. 

I have three examples of her work to replicate this pattern from...the first two are scans of ones that my Sister has, the third is the one she gifted to me when I got married.

The stitch count on this one is 5ds between
 each picot on the chains and 4ds between
each picot on the rings...

This one has 6ds between each picot on the
chains and 5ds between each picot on
the rings...

This cross was tatted by and given to me
on the occassion of my wedding
by my Grandmother Stella...
It has 3ds between picots throughout.

I have done the cross with a count of 4 DS between each picot.  The ones done by Grandma have a count between 3 and 6 DS between each picot.   It seems to be a very forgiving sort of a pattern.  I do think that when I tat this again I will try her version with 6ds between each picot on the chains and 5ds between each on the rings.  I think I like the spacing a little bit better on that one.  The thread I used is a size 20 Lizbeth in Mountain Breeze.  This will be motif #7 for me in the 25 motif challenge.

This is the one I tatted...

The white cross given to me by my Grandmother
with the one I tatted of the same pattern...

A Beautiful Handkerchief...

I received my very first givaway today...from Michelle Vitt here at Tela Magistrae.  It was very exciting to open the package and see what was inside...I knew there would be a hankie that had belonged to her Great Aunt Rose...but there were more little surprises too!  I'll show you in pictures...

Not just a Hankie...

The goodies inside...mint tea, a chocolate, a pretty ball of coats size 70,
a hair clip (which really must have tatting attached at some near date to
grace my little girls curls), some little rings and finding type things...
...and the prettiest hankie with lavendar roses and blue forget-me-nots!

A lovely note...on a beautiful victorian style note card...love this!!!

YES!  I will enjoy this Michelle :-)

So...what do you think?  A very pretty package to open, wasn't it!  I want to try Mary Konior's Asters edging pattern from Tatting With Visual Patterns for this handkerchief (yes, I bought that too last month when I couldn't seem to get any tatting done ~ I was still thinking tatting).

This hankie is such very very fine, very nearly transparent, fabric that I believe I must use a very small thread...size 70 or 80 I think...or perhaps I could get away with some size 30 in white...there are these pretty crisp white details on this hankie that you almost miss if you aren't looking closely...  (Are you clueing into the fact that I'm a little afraid to tat with the size 80 ~ even though I bought a bunch of the stuff)  at any rate...

The pretty coats thread doesn't quite match, though I love it...



...these are the DMC size 80 threads I have
(some of my new additions to my thread stash)
that I think might match...



Now, can you all help me choose a color to tat the edging for this lovely hankie with?  I'm somewhat leaning towards the pale lavendar in the middle, but am a little afraid it doesn't provide enough contrast.  The size 30 white really could work and be truely lovely.  At this point, I am completely undecided...really...I like them all and need some help deciding!!!