Oh Dear!

Or words to that effect. When I started Jane Eborall's Fandango Edging, I assumed that a 50g ball of size 20 thread would be ample to make an edging long enough to go around my small tablecloth. But yesterday I began to have doubts. I don't want to carry on if I'm not going to have enough thread to finish the job. Luckily Jack has an electronic scale for his beer making, so this morning I weighed what is left of the ball. 32g. So I have used 28g to do one and a half sides. So I will need 75g to finish the job! I hoped that perhaps I had another ball lurking somewhere, but no, this is the last one. Some sort of plan B required, but for now the project will have to go on hold.

Jon's Daisy

Jon put the pattern for this daisy pin on her pattern page yesterdy. It's a sweet little daisy and a quick tat, thanks Jon. I've left the threads so that I can sew it onto something. While I was about it, I thought I'd try her instructions for making a SSSR braid in two colours. It'll take a bit of practice to get the rings neat, but the technique works fine. Years ago I worked out how to do a motif in three colours by tatting with two shuttles at once, but later discovered that encapsulation achieved the same effect with much less effort!

Pattern link

I made a few minor changes this morning, like getting rid of a completely blank page at the end of the pattern, so it was a good idea to sleep on it. Here's the link to the pattern for the bracelet pictured. I'll try to put it on the sidebar too. 

Progress on the pattern

Ok, I've written the pattern and converted it to PDF, but it has boggled my mind. I think I had better sleep on it and then read it again and perhaps send it to my editor cousin to read before putting it out there. The bracelets in the picture are my 'safari collection', left to right leopard, zebra, elephant and lion. I hope you can see the loopy mane of the lion?

Preparing to write a pattern

I'm going to have a go at writing a pattern for a tatted bracelet. I don't have the facilities or abilities to draw diagrams, so I'm tatting the bracelet and taking photographs as I go along. Hopefully photographs will make the pattern clear. It'll take me a bit of time, I'll have to learn some new things as I go along. Watch this space!

Hoops

I'm not jumping through hoops, but using them to keep my fabric taut. The small hoop, with a rubber outer ring, is easier to use and was ideal for embroidering individual flowers, but doesn't work for the border pattern because it would need to be moved too often. I was worried that the border was too near the edge of the fabric for me to use the big hoop, but that worry was unfounded.

The label on the ball of dark green thread says that it contains 95 yards. I measured one motif, counted the number of motifs, did some conversions and calculations and decided there would be plenty of thread in the ball to complete the border. I didn't really want to use a variegated thread. I would've had to have taken much more care in deciding the sequence of stitches, or the result could've been very muddled.

Edging progress

I need 36 repeats of Jane Eborall's Fandango Edging pattern for one side of my tablecloth. One side done. I think I must wind this onto a piece of card to keep it neat until I'm ready to sew it on. Can you see a loop of thread tied loosely onto a chain? That is to remind me that I need 10 more repeats to get to the corner, so that I don't have to keep counting from the beginning.