Guest teaching Online Tatting Class

My first time as a guest instructor at Georgia's Online Tatting Class on Monday, December 14. I'll be talking about making the "Ruffled Orbit" earrings.

How it went at the Artisan Market

Whew! It was fun, but tiring.

Lots of people stopped to look at my tatted jewelry, and comments ranged from, "How intricate! Oh, so beautiful!" to "That looks so tedious. You'll go blind." Well, you know - it takes all sorts. I encouraged people to take my business card and check out my blog and the many other tatting blog links, so they could find out for themselves that tatting is NOT a "lost art", and that I am NOT the "last person on the planet" doing it!

I did make some sales, and better yet - so many people showed interest in taking a tatting class, that the organizer of the event (who also runs the gift shop) said she would contact me about scheduling tatting classes at Discovery World! I'll post more about this when I get more info.

Getting ready for the Holiday Artisan Market 2009

I'm tatting jewelry items like mad for the Holiday Artisan Market 2009, held at Milwaukee's Discovery World Museum on December 5 and 6. From past experience, I anticipate that the tatted jewelry will sell quite well. Hand dyed thread skeins don't go over so much in a general market. But the organizers have me on the vendor's list as selling both, so I'll bring along a few skeins anyway. Here's a photo of the way my booth looked last year.

The earrings in the top photo are tatted from Elizabeth's "Long Elegant Earrings" pattern, which she has for sale in her "Elizabeth's Lace" shop on Etsy. How nice that she has given permission to the purchasers of her pattern to sell the earrings we make from it - thanks, Elizabeth!

Since the readership of this blog is worldwide, probably not very many live close enough to actually attend this event, but just in case here is a link to the pdf flier about it.

I'll be wearing tatting and demonstrating tatting as well as selling.

"Remembrance" tatted ring

A tatted ring - actually!
Okay, I know it's not much of a pun, LOL.

In a way, these are almost easy enough to be a "no-brainer" pattern. But wait - there are ends to hide! 4 ends for one color, or a whopping 8 ends for two colors.

I've been using Lily's Way to sew in the ends. Of course, with two colors the first ends can be tatted over, so that helps a bit.

If you would like a free pdf of my "Remembrance" ring pattern,
Click here.

Original bracelets in the "stained glass" effect

The large bracelet is tatted in size 10, the small in size 20.

I had several unsuccessful starts trying to come up with a bracelet design that would coordinate with the "Wondrous Window" pendants, but I like these. The large measures about 7.5 inches, the small about 6.5 inches.

I decided on using a toggle closure since that seemed easiest to close.

From messy to beautiful

Hand dyed thread, so special for tatting and other lace work, begins as plain white thread (of high quality) and messy dye (I use Fiber-Reactive dye).

I wear a protective face mask to avoid breathing in the dry dye powder until it has been mixed into liquid form.





The wet dye color looks much darker than the finished color will look on the thread.

The way I make hand dyed thread (HDT) is to lay out the skeins onto plastic wrap and paint the dye on with a brush. There are other methods too, but this is how I do it. For cotton thread, I just roll up the skeins into the plastic and let them "cure".

If I'm dyeing a yarn with a wool content, I add some vinegar to the dye, since wool fiber needs an low pH, as opposed to the high pH required by cotton. Then I give the plastic-wrapped wool a "steambath" for 45 minutes. (I use a pot dedicated to dyeing purposes).

Then, the skeins are rinsed, rinsed, rinsed! Washed and rinsed some more, to make sure that the finished HDT is clean and will not "bleed" color when it is in use.

The straightened skeins are left to air dry, then twisted into attractive skeins to show.










Beautiful HDT!

The winners!

The 3 lucky winners are:

Icela

Donna

TAT19540

These winners were chosen by a random number generator. Congratulations, Ladies!

"Hot off the press" giveaway

Here's a photo of the page with my tatting featured in Belle Armoire magazine. Recognize those tatted pendants on the bottom right?

To celebrate, I'm having a GIVEAWAY!The prize is a copy of the magazine, plus 2 skeins of my hand dyed thread. One skein each of "Pizazz" and "A Leaf Falls", both size 20.

3 of these prize packages will be given away, regardless of how many enter. All you have to do to have a chance to win is to leave a comment on this post. You don't need to have a blog to enter, but you do need to leave some way for me contact you if you win.

Three winners will be selected at random on Friday, November 6. Good luck!

Colorful result of careful mixing, painting, curing, rinsing

Here is a photo of me hand painting thread with dye. The next picture shows the finished result, a lovely batch of "Garden Afternoon" hand dyed thread.