One of the categories I can enter tatting in at the North Carolina State Fair is "Bobbin Lace, Tatting, framed or mounted." I've been attaching tatting to non-fabric pieces and thought that technique might make an interesting entry. I tatted on and framed a metal bookmark a while back, but it was too long ago to enter it in this year's fair. All entries have to be completed in the year of entry even if they were started years earlier. I have a few metal pieces I could use and chose a sterling silver heart-shaped bookmark.
I decided to complement the silver piece with an edging in size 20 Lizbeth thread in color #605 Silver. The pattern is "Lace No. 11" from Tatted Handkerchiefs by Kirstine Nikolajsen and Inge Lise Nikolajsen (Akacia, 2002). One of the reasons I chose the pattern is that it is tatted in two rounds. This allowed me to set up a simpler base row attached directly to the bookmark so that I could figure out the number of repeats and spacing on the piece before doing the frillier, more complicated second row.
The finished piece was cupping quite a bit so I wet blocked the piece with water and spray starch over night. When it was dried, I opened up the picots by poking them with a small crochet hook. This also made the picots pretty much uniform in size. I finish all my pieces with picots this way rather than using a picot gauge. I can usually eyeball the size I want and then even out everything by stretching with the crochet hook. After that, I placed the piece under a stack of books to further flatten it.
The size of the piece is around 4" by 4" and I mounted it on a piece of black moiré fabric and placed it in an 8" by 8" black frame. The frame has an insert that allows you to create a shadowbox effect that sets the piece deep in the back of the frame.
2 comments:
This is a great idea once again, and I do not like gauges, I am thinking about it for a future thing that will need to be an inch but that would be only time ha ha :)
I would use some sort of gauge for extra long picots in a pattern, but otherwise I get along fine with my "picot poke" method.
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