I made this Easter Egg-shaped glass-enameled/copper tatting shuttle recently.
Now it needs a home for Easter (nothing like the last minute!)
Price $30 includes free shipping to US address
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I have just added 12 new glass-enameled/copper tatting shuttles to my website specially chosen for their SPRING-LIKE color combinations.
They are available for adoption from my home page: Click on ‘Tatting Shuttles’, then ‘Copper/Enameled Glass Tatting Shuttles’.
Check out the color descriptions and close-up views of the shuttles (front and back).
Payment is via PayPal.
Free shipping to USA addresses.
Prices: $20 to $25
I have sooooooo much tatting stuff in my studio that I have done through the 20+ years I have been active in tatting, a local tatting club and teaching nationally. Here are another items that I ‘found’ while cleaning/searching for something else.
The bottom item is a bunch of doodles I made that could be used on notecards, with tatted rings/bits added to. I compiled these doodles to give (myself) ideas as to how I could quickly use my left-over tatted rings for fun projects (you know: the rings you make from the leftover thread on a shuttle to ‘clean’ it out). Keep in mind that I do not consider myself an artist, thus these little drawings were references for me to use for that purpose. It actually started with my local tatting club (The ShuttleBugs of Omaha)….whenever we used to to demos at events, one of the members had notecards stamped with little designs similar to the ones in the picture. Club members donated to the cause tatted rings (using up leftover thread from our shuttles). We allowed the public to choose rings and glue them onto the notecards. Everyone just loved it!!!!! Maybe we didn’t get any new tatters from the process, but we did share the beauty & appreciation of tatting.
The 2 items at the top of the picture are ceramic/resin buttons that resemble vases that I bought sometime in the past. I thought that I could use them to add my tatted ‘flowers’ and create something. (I never did use them and thus they ended up in my drawer, one of them broken along the way).
I should scan in the drawings and share them on my website. I shall have to put it on my ‘to do’ list. Keep in mind my ‘to do’ list is quite long—if you are interested, send me a note (either here as a comment or email me at k.bovard@yahoo.com) and that could spur me to bump it towards the top of the list.
This weekend, on my list of things ‘to do’, was the task of creating my 2014 business accounting ledger for income tax filing purposes. My MO is to put all receipts into a folder and then in the new year, try to make sense of the receipts and create an appropriate business account. Somehow along the way, I decided to put the ‘2014 reciept folder’ in a SAFE place (ie. hidden somewhere stupid) and that was why I spent a large amount of time looking for the folder on Sunday. Along the way I found a very messy drawer of my tatting/lacemaking treasures and started to clean an in the process I found these items in the picture. They constitute my collection of handmade and purchased picot gauges. In addition there are two homemade (by me) thread winders. I don’t remember what the ‘C-shaped’ apparatus is for, even though I made it!!!
This item is a set of 3 picot gauges created and sold by Daniel Rusch Fisher (quite a long time ago). They consist of a sheet of clear, fairly thin plastic with the gauges printed on the plastic in various sizes. To use them, one would have to carefully cut out each piece along each picot size step.
The reason they were in my drawer all these years is that I do NOT use picot gauges. For some strange reason at some point I decided to buy and make these ‘just for grins’.
Please consider joining me at the IOLI Convention in Iowa City, Iowa this coming summer.
This is the second post about the class I will be teaching entitled PEARL TATTING
In addition to learning about the basic of pearl tatting (both rings & chain) and other decorative stitch combination you will learn a totally new form of tatting technique originated by by me that I call “Layered Pearl Tatting”.
The second half of class time we will focus on the “Grand Project” in which we will bring many of the Pearl Tatting Techniques together to create a multiple thread-source pouch. Students will have the choice as to how much of a challenge in tatting they want to tackle.
I understand that there has been alot of interest in this multi-shuttle/thread source pouch. This is your chance to learn it.
I love advanced tatting techniques, and this class is truly innovative!
As I have stated before, I will be teaching at the 2015 IOLI (Int. Organization of Lacers, Inc) Convention in Iowa City, Iowa.
Go to this address for more information: http://www.internationalorganizationoflace.org/2015Convention/index.html
I have been posting alot about my designs for my Quilt-Inspired Fun with Split Ring Tatting Class…but am realizing that I haven’t shown much about my other tatting class titled Basics of Pearl Tatting.
Pearl Tatting Technique utilizes 3 or more thread sources to create beautiful rings & chains.
In the first half of class time we will learn the basics of Pearl Tatting Technique and how to manipulate it to create diverse and unique decorative forms–both rings and chains.
We will also learn how to create other unique tatting combinations of the basic double stitch such as: Twisted Stitch, Ric-Rac/Zig-Zag/Sets of Stitches/Lattice Tatting/Node Stitch, and ‘Inside-Stitch’ Chains.
We will then take these fairly well-known techniques ‘up a notch’ by combining them with Pearl Tatting Technique to create “Hybrid” techniques originated by Karen—are you interested yet!!!????? These techniques have not been published so far!!!!
The left photo shows a collage of simple Pearl Tatted Chain projects that we will do to practice and learn the techniques while at the same time creating usefull tools for our tatting life.
The right photos show a collage of Pearl Tatted Rings.
I will introduce the synopsis of the second half of the class in another post….watch for it!
This tatted quilt block was just cut fresh off the tatting shuttles and then I plopped it down on the couch cushion and took this photo (so it is not blocked in any way, shape, or form).
The give and take about my designs is that you get to use alot of color in a piece. I usually grab whatever shuttles/colors that I have wound and really don’t put alot of thought into my color selection. I just want to get going!!!
However, the down-side is that you have alot of ends to deal/contend with at the end of the tatting process. I always use Continuous Thread Method (CTM) to start my motifs….I have several procedures/techniques to make that happen.
However, the ENDS are still an issue. So I thought I’d show you how ‘ugly’ a piece can be and describe what I’m going to do about it.
I am on the hunt for a finely woven piece of cloth that I can mount the piece on. The procedure will be to use a fine crochet hook to bring the ends to the back of the fabric and tie the ends in a square knot. To do this I need a high thread count fabric because I want to use white fabric and don’t want the thread ends to show/’ghost’ on the frontside of the fabric. When I stopped off at a needlework shop two days ago looking for what I wanted, I realized that I needed at least 32 count fabric. Of course the higher the count (more threads per inch) the more expensive the fabric. This particular shop didn’t have what I was interested in but I also realized that I don’t need pure linen fabric either (cost goes up!).
There are a couple more needlework shops in Omaha that I’m going to visit this weekend (can’t wait!). I think that a fabric called Jobelin or Lugana will work well for me. Both are cotton/synthetic blends and not as costly as linen.
I’ll let you know more about what I find and show you the mounting procedure and final product when I’m done.
I spent a recent weekend on a mini vacation to Des Moines, Iowa which is about 150 miles away from Omaha, Nebraska (where I live) with my husband and another couple. The theme of the weekend was primarily Blues (music) as it was the Central Iowa Blues Society festival in which they had 12 different regional blues bands on 7 stages throughout Saturday night. The secondary theme of the weekend however was Beer. Our friends are really interested in craft beers and I have to admit, I am too! So we went to Des Moines a day early to explore the restaurants and bars downtown before the Blues festival started.
I discovered probably the best thing I have ever eaten: tator tots with jalapeno (just a little) wrapped in bacon and deep-fried, then covered in cheddar cheese with ranch dressing to dip in at a unique bar called El Bait. It had over 100 beers (good ones!) on tap. The atmoshere was fun.
We ate at a German restaurant (German beer was consumed) and later hung out at at lounge that looked like a English pub (British beer was consumed). The blues venue was great….we heard alot of great music.
However, the weekend had a new theme when a snowstorm/blizzard came through the region. It started snowing Saturday afternoon and continued until Sunday afternoon. We knew that the roads were terrible all the way home, so we decided to stay put in our cushy hotel and stay an extra day. Soooo on Sunday the theme was snow & tatting. When my three comrades decided to spend their Sunday afternoon napping, I grabbed my tatting and went down to the hotel lobby to watch people, the snow and tat. I met a woman who was a knitter/quilter and got her excited about tatting. I even pulled out a tapestry needle I have in my tatting bag (that I use to sew-in thread ends) to give an impromptu lesson on how easy it is to needle tat. I happened to have a copy of Handy Hands catalog and so I pulled out the ‘how to needle-tat’ directions in the catalog to send home with her. Hopefully she will become a new tatter!
Just thought I’d show off my ‘babies’—one of The ShuttleSmith’s Enameled Copper Tatting Shuttles (#164)
This particular one is sort of spring-like—weather that we have NOT been having here in Omaha, Nebraska.
It features a base layer of ‘Opal Clear’ enamel and a layer of White.
Then the following colors are added on top of the base:
The shape is a little different from my normal shape in that it is pointed on only one side, the other side being rounded.
It is also a tad-bit bigger than my regular shuttles: 1 3/8 x 2 15/16 inch (30 x 75 cm)
Price: $30 — includes free shipping to US addresses
Every shuttle is ‘one of a kind’—no two alike because they are handmade by me, The ShuttleSmith.
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I call this collection my Pinwheel Quilt-Inspired Split Ring Tatting group.
I consider it to be be ‘Quilt-Inspired’ because quilting is about repetition, symmetry and use of color—these designs have all of that!!!
What do you think?