Size matters!

It is often said that size doesn't matter...however I have a problem here. My collar, made from the pattern Eunice in Lyn Morton's book "Tatting Patterns", is very pretty but it would probably be rather tight on a baby! It just fits around the base of a wine glass. I guess the silk thread is rather finer than the size 20 Altin Basak thread that she suggests. I have no idea how one might adjust a pattern like that to make it bigger...I will have to try a different pattern.

This motif come from Myra Piper's book and is called "Forget-me-not". Here I was using a fine silk thread, perhaps 100? Anyway although I had previously made this pattern in a larger thread with no problem, in this size the outer round just didn't fit.
Luckily this is not a problem nowadays, for Sherry takes all tatting scraps, willingly, to use for her pottery, so nothing is actually wasted. :)
P.S. look TattingChic, for once I actually sewed in those ends on the collar!

Some silk fragments, and more pictures from Melbourne

This was a typical lacy building in the city.

I love how they have decorated these trees, using vintage bits of doilies, and it gives me ideas of how I could use my box of tatted bits...


This is a rather poor scan of some of the silk tatted into stuff. I am also working on a white collar, but it keeps twisting into a spiral, I will have to see how it works when I add in the second row.
I am guessing the silk works out at around 40 or 50 size. The multi coloured bookmark is in 100 cotton from Gütermann, Rosie said it looked as if it had been commissioned by Google!
Sorry for the mess of ends, especially as I have new needles and some excellent needle threaders, so no excuse not to get it all perfect!

Tatting in Melbourne

This beautiful tatting was displayed in a shop in Melbourne. I went in there to buy a pack of clover shuttles, not because I needed them, but because if I see shuttles anywhere I collect them. The girl working in the shop, (?Jones? in Collins Street) was very friendly and I was able to show her my tatting, because she is taking lessons with the lady who did this work.



I also found a shop selling silks, and I went in to look at the different materials. There were some reels of thread, in bright colours, and as I have enjoyed tatting with LadyShuttleMaker's silk I decided to risk buying a reel and see if it would work. It isn't the easiest thread to use, but I love the result. My computer is downstairs so I can't scan the motifs that I have done so far, but I will as soon as I can.