I'm nearly finished with the pillowcase edging I'm tatting to enter in the State Fair in October. I started this project many weeks ago, but stopped working on it while I started and finished two other fair projects (a beaded pin and a handkerchief edging).
Today I picked it back up to happily discover that I was almost finished with the tatting part. Not so happily, I realized that I'd lost track of the number of double stitches in various rings and chains. Didn't I diagram out the stitch count somewhere, and, if so, where is that scrap of paper? Boy, is it hard to count those tiny stitches even with magnification. Is it 4 or 5 stitches in this part of the chain? Is it 1 stitch between picots or 2? This is what happens when you put aside a project for too long and it's a project you're making up from a blurry photograph you vaguely remember seeing somewhere on the Web.
After a bit of tatting and untatting, I finally got the last two motifs done and the piece connected into a circle that can be attached to a pillowcase. Now I have to deal with all these loose tails from the flower motifs. Do I sew them into the ring's stitches and hope they don't wiggle out with use? Or do I somehow bury them into the pillowcase hem and hope that they stay hidden? Decisions, decisions.
And I must not forget that there's still a lot of sewing to be done so that the chains stay neatly flat and securely fastened. All this is important because I actually will use and launder the pillowcase in the future. How I wish edgings would just magically attach themselves to whatever they are intended to embellish.
4 comments:
I know how you feel, now I can thread a needle really fast and I wait till morning time too :)
For individual flowers, I usually do a SSSR to secure & hide tails. Then all that is required is perhaps a couple of stitches under the head.
You seem to have tails long enough to simply insert through the fabric & knot behind ! Do a short backstitch line to secure it, in case you don't like knots. With very tiny backstitching placed under the tatted lace area, it should not be visible from front at all.
The pattern appears to be 'Down The Garden Path' by Pam Palmer . I used it, too, on my throw/cushion in a circular arrangement ! And I sewed down a few tatted butterflies flitting around ;-) In case you want to check it out, type "Encircling" in my blog search box.
Looking forward to your other projects ...
Thank you, Muskaan, for IDing the pattern. Looks like my piece has fewer picots in several places and the flowers have 6 instead of 5 rings because I made a mistake with the 1st one and decided to continue with the rest.
Oh, I added the extra picots deliberately to get a lush look .
It is such a versatile pattern that your 6 petalled flowers work beautifully !
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