Red, White, and Blue...Stars!

I had it in my head that I really wanted to tat some pretty star ornaments in Red, White, and Blue for the 4th of July...This one is StarChic my Jon Yusoff.  It's a pretty little design, and a one shuttle pattern...nice and easy.

The difficult part is finding a varigated thread in the red, white, and blue colors I wanted.  I finally found two, an Aunt Lydia's in size 10 (used in the star shown here) and a vintage clarks's thread in about a size 70. 

I tried just this one motif with the Aunt Lydia's, it's just too soft a thread to tat nicely with...the colors don't actually run red, white, and blue either, but rather red, white, blue, white.  It was also too floppy to hang nicely until I starched it to the point of complete saturation.  You can see below that it is still not real stiff... 

I still like this little star though...and I think I'll count it as #9 in my 25 motif challenge!

The size 70 is simply too small...I want the star's to be larger than that...so I suppose I will just have to continue to look for what I want or tat sets of three stars, in white, christmas red, and maybe navy or a royal blue...I may play with that next. 

I do have a pretty bit of Anika's hand dyed thread from her giveaway in red, white, and blue to play with...it's a slightly softer red and such a pretty sea blue...reminds me of sea glass!  I'm working on a special little something with that, it's such lovely colors...and quite nice to tat with!