Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day....and today is even February 14th.  I know, I know that doesn't happen very often that I post my holiday pictures on the exact holiday but for some reason I was able to get the projects done and in the mail by the day.   I am afraid not all of them will be received by today but at least it will be close.


I actually made 18 of these ornaments and I am going to call these 5 in the motif challenge.  I found the pattern for these fun little hearts on pintrest but you can find the pattern directly on this bloggers site here.  The pattern is very repetitive and they work up fairly quickly.  I used a size 10 thread from Artiste and the color is tropical pink.  You can find the pattern for the little beaded do-dad at threadabead.

I actually tried 4 other hearts before I finally settled on the one I did.  Below are motifs 6,7 and 8. I used a skein of thread that I had gotten from Goodwill so I am not sure what it is.




The heart on the left is a pattern from Bergit Phelps called Sweetheart and it can be found here.  I really like the way this one turned out but the pattern wasn't super repetitive and I needed a patter that would be easy to remember in my head because I knew I would be taking this project with me to California. I would imagine I will be trying this one again.
The heart in the right is a pattern by Betsy Evans and she calls it small tatted heart.  I didn't love the way this one turned out and the pattern was quite difficult to remember so I took a pass on this one as well.




I knew before I started this heart that it was probably going to be quite large but I tried it anyway.  This pattern is very repetitive but it would require tons of stiffening and after the fiasco with the Christmas trees I did I decided to steer clear of this one as well. The name of this heart is Tat Chat heart and I found it in the web archive.  Its a pattern by LaRae Mikulecky and you can find it here.



I really like this little heart by Irene Woo called Butterfly Heart. I found the pattern in the web archives and it can be found hereThe rings in the butterfly are fairly large with lots of stitches making it very difficult to close so I knew I didn't want to fight it with every ornament so this wasn't it either.  I will probably be trying this one again with a better, stronger thread.
In case you were wondering why I didnt trim any of my ends off on these, well the answer is simple...I use the ends to attach a tag to the project listing the name of the pattern and where to find it.  My memory is not the best...old age is creeping in on lots of levels, and this seems to be the best method for me.

I hope you all had a really good day, at least surrounded by people you love!






Thursday, February 2, 2017

Merry late christmas, NAMM, hubby turns 50

It has been a super crazy busy last couple of weeks! I was very blessed to be able to go to California with my hubby on his business trip to NAMM which is one of the worlds biggest music industry conventions.  It is basically a musicians/music lovers paradise dream come true. This was my 5th year in a row being able to go and each year I have met lots of my musician idols including some of the biggest names in 80s butt rock history.  It rained almost the whole week we were there included terrible flooding in some areas so we spent most of the time indoors.
The best part of the whole trip was being able to hang out with my step daughter and her hubby and her new baby.  Our new grand baby turned a year old on Christmas day.  What a complete joy he is and we are so very proud of his parents for being so awesome!!
We were gone a whole week and we came home to find our refrigerator and freezer had quit working and the moles outside had completely ruined our front yard. At this point there are more mole mounds than yard, it is very frustrating and makes me so sad. Thankfully the reason for the appliance fail was a tripped GFI in the kitchen, but unfortunately we lost at least $300 in food.
 Some of the other business included throwing a 50th birthday party for the hubby and then taking him to a fancy steak dinner once we got home, going to our companies annual get together and working several shows at the casino. I didn't get a lot of tatting done due to the craziness but I did finally get most of the Christmas cards shipped off so its time to post pictures.
I found this tree pattern at be-stitched.  This was actually a pretty fun pattern to stitch. It is a very repetitive pattern and I wanted the "needles to look like natures" so I was very sloppy with the picots.  This was the first project I did that required a stiff blocking because of the position I wanted to put the angel on the tree and the super large picots. I tried several different methods and finally settled on glue and water.  I tried using a corn starch pattern that I found online and as you can see by the tree on the right I either did something wrong or the starch pattern doesn't work with colored thread.

The starch turned the green tree whitish and it wont come out. I didn't try using sugar because some of the people I sent them to have pets and I have heard that the sugar can be a temptation to the pets. The spray on starch that I usually use didn't stiffen it enough. It actually took some trial and error to get the glue starch figured out. To get them stiff enough I had to use quite a bit of glue and very little water and I had to remember to peel them off the plastic paper they were drying on and turn them over half way through the drying process to avoid the build up of glue that happened to the back of them. I found the best method was to first iron them so the picots laid flat and the painting the glue mixture on the trees with a paintbrush.  I ended up making 16 complete ornaments with a total of 19 tatted trees. The worst part of these was by far the stiffing, it seemed to take forever so I was very glad when they were all completed. It took a really long time to get them all out in the mail, in fact I still have 2 more that need to go out.  With any amount of luck they should go out within the week...Wish me luck!