Tatted Flower Choker

 The story behind this design is that I got the inspiration from a vintage edging pattern. It had the bottom part of the flower "petals" with the big picot-ed ring in the middle, and so naturally I thought a bead would fit into that ring nicely.

So, I grabbed some hand dyed thread from my latest batch "Gold Crimson", and because I wanted to get done with the project quickly, used size 10 thread. Now, size 10 does tat up quickly - BUT - it's a lot harder to get Swarovski crystal pearls (one of my favorite beads) onto it. The holes in the beads need to be just slightly bigger, argh! Still, I managed to get them on, using a size 15 crochet hook. I could have done it with a wide eye beading needle and a piece of sewing thread, too.

 The idea of completing the flower shape on top didn't occur to me until after I had the first side done. At first I had planned on doing something different so I had a picot in the middle of the short chain between flowers. Later, after a bit of experimentation, it seemed that putting more petals on top would make a cute flower. Because there are only 2 petals on top, with 3 petals on the bottom, repeating the motif tends to form a nice curve. A solid "Lizbeth" thread coordinated well with the hand dyed. I used the extra picot to make a Catherine Wheel join there, but the extra join seemed unnecessary to add stability, so on my next attempt I'm not putting a picot there.

I already have another one started, this time in size 20 thread. The first choker I made using only one shuttle and the ball thread, but the turns are tidier by using 2 shuttles, so that's what I'm doing now. There will need to be about 24 repeats in the size 20 thread; the size 10 thread version used 17 repeats. The first side flops around a lot until the second side is added to stabilize it.

Maybe a hand dyed would look nice on the second half of the brown necklace, hmm.