11th Motif - Rosie the Seahorse Dragon

Meet Rosie, the Seahorse Dragon. This is Anne Bruvold's pattern which she taught in a recent online tatting class.

I've hesitated to do any of Anne's dragons because they looked so difficult. But, Anne, thank you so much for the seahorse dragon. The instructions are clear and easy to follow and I really enjoyed creating this piece.

As with other patterns I've done that join two pieces together, I always have to stop and think about what I'm doing. The first time, I usually join things upside down, but that's all part of the learning process.

Rosie's body is needle tatted while her wing is shuttled tatted. There's no particular reason for that; I just wanted to use both methods.

10th Motif - Snowflake #2

Here is another snowflake from Lene Bjorn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting book.

It is the Thirteenth Day of December pattern which, like my previous snowflake, has long chains.

There was another challenge with this snowflake which I have yet to conquer. It is the dreaded split chain. My heartfelt thanks to all who have created videos on this technique. I feel like I managed it pretty well for this snowflake but I definitely need to find more patterns to practice the split chain technique.

Like many other tatters who have tatted all of the snowflakes in this book, I hope to be able to do that before the end of 2010. They are beautiful and I'd really like to add them to my collection of snowflakes.

9th Motif - Snowflake #1

I took Lene Bjorn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting book with me on vacation because I've been anxious to try some of these patterns and because it's time to start thinking about motifs for the holidays.

It was difficult to choose which snowflake to begin with. Of course, I could have just started with the first one, but doesn't everyone do that?

Instead, I began with The Fifth Day of December snowflake and shuttled tatted it while on vacation. I also did some very small motifs like butterflies but I gave them away to anyone who inquired about what I was doing. Clicking on the photo will enlarge it but please don't look too closely :) remember, I was on vacation.

As for doing something new as part of my 25 Motif Challenge, the only thing about this snowflake that was a little challenging was making long, even-tensioned chains.

One of the reasons for choosing this particular snowflake was that each round was repetitive which meant I could put it down and pick it back up later and not lose my place.