Tea with Miss Caroline

 Six or seven years ago, I made a lot of muslin milk jug covers with tatted edgings and motifs which I gave away as gifts. It was my first foray into using beads! I thought it was an idea worth revisiting. But I'd forgotten how long it takes to tat a beaded edging. I'm going to have to come up with a simpler version if it's going to be worth selling them at a Christmas Market. I think Miss Caroline will be gifted because no one would be willing to pay for the time this took me to do.

WIP

 Thanks to Frivole for the idea of using a packet tie to make a hook for adding beads.

Smoothing Miss Caroline's Dress

In yesterday's purple version of Martha Ess's Miss Caroline, the long chains were a  bit muddled. In this version, I made very, very small picots after every 4 ds and joined the long chains together for more stability. Ladytats suggested using double double stitch or lock chains. I had already tried double double stitch, which wasn't a success. Lock stitch worked better:

Jess's Tat-ilicious thread shows the lock chains off well. Now, which of these two versions works best?

Crinoline Ladies

This lady, designed by Heather the Tarnished Tatter, is intended for needle tatting. I've read that any shuttle pattern can be made with needles, but I don't know if the reverse is true! Anyway, this lady can be made with shuttles. At 15 cm, she's too tall for my purposes. I could use a finer thread, but there are rather too many cut and ties for my liking. For anyone looking for the pattern, which I have had on my computer for ages,  this is Tatted Lady no 2.

I went on the search for another pattern and eventually found this one, Miss Caroline, the Crinoline Belle, by Martha Ess:

I struggled a bit with the very long chains, perhaps because the Milford thread is very twisted. But I do like Miss Caroline, so I'll have another go at her. She is 10 cm tall, so she'll work for what I have in mind.

Lace in Place

 My daughter sent me this photo of her wearing her merino blouse with the tatted lace sewn to the sleeves. The tatting enlivens a rather plain blouse! Here's another picture:

For those that missed it, here's a link to the post where I wrote about tatting the lace.

All in Red

I've been wanting to put these two roses together for a while. The smaller one with leaves was designed by Usha on In Tatters, while the other one was designed by Victats, but they are both stylised roses and I think they 'belong' together. I put 6 of Victat's rose on the food cover and 7 of Usha's.

Mrs. Odum's Daisy

 Mrs. Odum's daisy has been on my to-do list for a long time. I don't remember where I first saw the motif, but I have to say I really like Elizabeth's version with beads added.