FLORAL SPRAY ~ FREE TATTING

One Lesson Completed! Advanced Exercise
Scanned as they lay on the plate. . .

PHOTO AT LEFT. "Free Style" Online Class Assignment presented to us by Georgia Seitz. Since it is 'free' tatting I exercised some tatter's license to follow the first part of the exercise and end off with a whimsical double picot flower spray. I used Valdini size 12 perle cotton in both examples, with Fall Colors. I used two shuttles for this exercise and added in a third shuttle.

PHOTO AT RIGHT. The 'tendril' is actually the exercises from pages 5, 6 of Helen Siepmann's, "Tatting: Artistry in Thread," and Page 9's Plant Basics using the 'creative' stitch and 'five new knotting' stitches. I didn't want to waste the exercises from pages five and six, so I incorporated them into the final design (for posterity).

I had never done wrapping of chains before (non-flipped stitches. If you can do a split ring, you can do the non-flipped 'wrapping') I used 3 shuttles for this exercise. I had used 3 shuttles for perle tatting on a leaf's stem before. It took a bit for me to 'get' Ms Seipmann's terminology, but the directions are very clearly written. I had no problems completing the second piece. It was just different stitch names given for stitches I already knew; IE: lock stitch/creative stitch.

THIS could become truly addictive as a tatting style. I could think of all sorts of pastoral and scenic views of ponds, little houses, birds and flowers on painted silk backgrounds; or even backgrounds with oils or water-colour pencils. I'm not as intrigued by using the technique as something worn as I am with the other creative options. Although, I can see artfully arranged elements used on clothing could be quite nice.

I was amazed that I had no sense of time passing as I contemplated and added. Having a hemostat would be a plus. A bit tricky to hold one's bundles; however, I overcame that by making a lock stitch after each element and that held it in place as I worked. This was 30 minutes of PURE fun!