New Lace Form for me

 During the I. O. L. I. convention was held in Durham, NC, several of my tatting collegues inquired of me whether or not I had any other lace-making skills beyond tatting.  At the time, I had forgotten about the Teneriffe looms I had acquired some years ago in an Ebay purchase.  I felt encouraged to pull them out of their hiding place and see what could be done with them.

Thank goodness for the Antique Pattern Library!  What a treasure trove of material for all sorts of crafting!  I was able to locate a Teneriffe instruction book and begin.  My first effort was rather a compilation of techniques found in it, but it was a start.  

                                       

At a recent lace demonstration event at the Columbus / Polk County (NC) Historical Association, I learned from one of my lacing collegues that for many years, lacemaking patterns were held in great secrecy to keep the designs from being stolen.  As a consequence, the patterns and ways of working the designs were being lost by some lace-making houses.  Of course this led to the potential for hand-created laces becoming lost altogether.  It has been only through the efforts of dedicated lace makers that has kept this from happening.  And this is what is going on with Teneriffe lace: a few dedicated lacers, mostly in the UK and Paraguay are passing along the information to the next generation of practitioners.  

From the start, I had no idea what I was doing, but I did discover that this lace form was created on the back-side of the work, not the front.  Right away there was a challenge. To resolve this, my first step was to purchase an updated loom   It's a lovely design that is much more easily warped than the antique ones I had on hand.  At the same time, this newer loom remains one that does not allow for the "front side" of the work to be visualized.  At Palmetto Tatters Guild's Tat Days Convention last month, the vendor there had a new loom by Gina B Silkworks (UK) that had no center, making it much easier to see the front side of the creation.  

This makes it easier to see what I am doing and where adjustments can be made to make each technique more pleasing to the eye.  It does not, however give specific measurements that help make spacing more even and regular.  That may be better carried out with practice, with using a pattern on paper with guides or adding guides to the center of the looms on hand.  Once the Teneriffe piece was removed from the loom, it was much more clear how the entire pattern was presented.

It came out much better than the first attempt and this loom came with a notation for design elements for the pattern.  Much more to learn. . .

Tatting for the Fair

 Last fall, my friend served as a volunteer at the Mountain State Fair in Asheville, an event that I have submitted entries for the Tatting competition in years past.  She indicated that there were so few entries in the “Tatting"  catagory of Arts and Crafts that she feared that category would so go away in the not very distant future.  She encouraged me to find something that I could enter in the fair next year.  So I set about it.  

Over the years, I have collected tatting pattern books by various authors.  One such author is Ineke Kuiperij, a lady in the Netherlands whose books came across the Atlantic with my friend and tatting colleague Riet Surtel-Smeulders when she would journey to the US from her home in the Netherlands to visit family, attend Palmetto Tatters Guild’s Tat Days and other area events.  Sadly, Riet passed away in 2025 and the world has lost another grand master of the craft.

I looked through Ineke’s books and found one particular pattern that I felt would challenge my skills and be an appropriate entry into the competition this coming fall.  It is in this book and an image of my chosen ornament is shown on the cover in the upper right hand corner.  

The piece is complex and created in 4 panels.  Each panel has 5 independent sections which are joined as the piece is tatted along.  Beads are added at intervals.  I chose Liz Metalic in size 20 and the color 313 (SandDollar) with Hemitite beads size 4 mm and black onxy beads size 6 mm.  The pattern was written for size 80 thread and I knew this finished piece would be larger, but it was one I wanted to showcase.  

Judging how much to wind onto my shuttles can be a challenge as well and on the 4th section of the 1st panel, I cut it so close that I had to make the last ring a Split Ring even though the pattern did not call for it:

Thank goodness for crochet hooks and split rings!

The Twelve Snowmen of Christmas, 2024

The preparations for the 2024 Deck the Trees fundraising effort revolve around the theme of "Winter Wonderland." While the image above is only of five snowmen, a complete set of 12 have been finished for this season's Tatted Tree.  Some years ago - 2011 to be precise - Palmetto Tatters Guild's Tat Days Conference had a similar theme: "Tatting in a Winter Wonderland" which had artwork in the Logo that included a snowman.  This has prompted the idea that snowmen would be an outstanding addition to the snowflakes, angels and bells that have been gracing the Tatted Tree for the past 13 years. 

Patterns for snowmen are a bit of a challenge to find, but Sandy Scales and Barbara Foster have written  a free one that can be found on the Handy Hands Tatting site here.   It is cute and fairly straight-forward to carry out.  Another such design is Wanda Salmans' "Button-centered Tatted Snowman" written in 2015.  This one, too is simple but effective.  Monica Hahn included 2 snowmen patterns in her Dover Needlework publication entitled "Christmas Angels and other Tatting Patterns"  Debbie Arnold sells a pair of patterns in her Etsy Shop and a completed tatted snowman is available for purchase from Tatted Dreams by Jolene Etsy shop.  That was for the most part the extent of what I found.  If I missed anything, it's on me, but armed with these patterns I set to work.  

It took several months to finish them, but to date, I have completed a total of 12 snowman bodies from 3 different patterns including ones with button centers and an older pattern that I have modified so that it went together more smoothly.  If a hat was part of the pattern, such as in the Scales & Foster pattern, the over all appearance seemed rather stiff.   Some of the patterns did not include hats at all. So off to the land of images went I looking for something I could use to add whimsy to the finished products.  I found a few that I though might be suitable, printed them out, re-sized them as necessary and came up with 3 options that I thought might work.  They looked like this:

Craft foam sheets are cost effective and easy to cut through.  They are useful in many crafting applications and really fit the requirements in this case because they are light weight, solid construction and not translucent or transparent.  I traced off the reapective outlines for each design and cut each out so that I had hats that looked something like this once a hat band was added:

The hats aren't very big some smaller ribbons were in order.  Since I am confined to our camper until the house is finished, I have to rely on what craft supplies I can find in our storage lockers unless I want to purchase items I have no room for.  Each hat that was worked up ranged in size between 1 inch and 2 1/2 inches wide and no more than an inch high.  If the ribbons on hand were too wide, I cut them down to a suitable size before adding them to the craft foam "hats."  

For the most part, the items were something I could use easily, but the ribbon with the red pom-poms was going to require greater modification,  I cut off the red pom-poms for use as "buttons" reserving the white band for use on some hats themselves.  

With the 12 hats and respective bands ready to attach to the tatted snowmen, I used a fabric glue to put the parts together.

Any of the snowmen that did not have a face as part of the tatting or pattern was going to require adding sequins for eyes and mouth and something to indicate buttons on the "body."  

The hats taken from snowmen images really added a touch of fancifulness to these snowmen!  Lastly,  ribbon scarves and embelishments are added to the hats as well as hangers to mount them on the tree at the Monte Vista Hotel the first week of December.  More to follow once the date has arrived.