Mock Rings

Motif 11 is a little daunting because the rings in the outer row are so large -  37 ds. I had some thread left on the shuttle after the second round, so I did some experimenting. I tatted a normal ring, self closing mock ring and two mock rings joined to an inward picot at the start. Two of the true mock rings because even though it's the best option, you have to be careful to snug the ds up as you go, not wait until the end of the chain before pushing them along. I think the experimenting paid off, I was more confident by the time I tackled the outer round. Here's a photo of the start of a mock ring, with a safetypin holding the inward picot open:

I used the shoelace trick to change the direction of the chain before starting the mock ring. The chains themselves are long too, and there again it's important to snug the stitches up as you go.

Page Ten

These motifs are classified as one-shuttle designs, but they require a ball thread for the chains. One interesting point about the book (The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito) is that the photographs sometimes differ from the diagrams. In the first motif, the diagram shows the top rings as separate, whereas the photo shows them joined. I followed the photo to make the motif more stable. In motif 8, top right in this photo, the diagram shows the picots of the centre rings joined, whereas in the photo they are loose, which gives the middle a fluffier look.

Motif 6

This is motif 6 from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito. I had a couple of false starts on this one. On my first attempt to tat the motif, there was no way I could 'square the circle'; there was a big gap between last ring and first. I adjusted the length of the picots and bare spaces are tried again. Fine. I did two motifs and then realised I didn't have enough matching thread for 8 motifs. I could've joined the motifs in a different way, but I rather like this arrangement shown in the book, it's unusual. So I started again. I like it. This is the last of the 'one shuttle only' motifs, I think.

Measured

I worked the one on the left eyeballing the bare spaces. On the second one I used a piece of folded paper to measure them:

Worth the slightly longer time taken? I don't think so. It might be necessary for longer bare spaces, but with this length it wasn't too difficult to get them consistent.

Motif 4

Long picots and bare thread spaces give this a very spidery look. I used picot gauges for the long picots, two different sizes. I use bits of cardboard for gauges.

Variations

Designs 2 and 3 are essentially the same, with different stitch counts. Of course, the little rosettes can be joined in different ways in both cases.

Start At The Very Beginning

'The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito' has been calling to me ever since it arrived in February. I paged through it yesterday and wondered where to begin. The beginning, of course, just as the song says. I'm going to work my way through the book. The motifs are numbered; I shall follow the numbers.
The book is structured so that it begins with one shuttle patterns and then progresses to two shuttles and then three. There's not a lot of text, it relies mostly on diagrams:

It's one of those motifs that looks simple but isn't easy to get right.

The little motif on the left is my first attempt. It cups, as you can see. I didn't think carefully enough about what changes were required in order for it to lie flat, so my second attempt is considerably worse! The third one was good enough for me to continue. Getting the picot lengths and bare thread spaces correct is key. That's true for many of the patterns in the book, so I'm hoping that by starting at the first motif, I will gain the experience I need to do the more complicated designs later.