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.

Moving to More Tatting

 I haven't created a post here in quite a while.  It has been quite a journey from late January to today.

The door on the art barn has been replaced thanks to our friend and HandiMan Alex.  The building is now secure and weather proof!

Meanwhile, I hit a problem in one of my tatting projects: it involved a pattern printed originally in Norwegian, I believe.  Once translated, there were some linguistic obsticals to overcome.  I am not sure if I made a mistake or if there was an error either in the pattern or in the translation, but something had to be re-arranged.  Sometimes, in cases like this, shifting emphasis to something else is beneficial.

One day I saw a Facebook post about a flower that had been created by Krystyna Mura based on a 1920 publication in German by Eleonor Endrucks.  Someone had suggested that the pattern might be suitable for a 3-D version.  Since that looked similar to other 3-D flower patterns I had tatted, noteably those of Linda S. Davies of England, I decided to divert my attention from that which was overwhelming me and give this a spin.  The resulting pattern is this one.  

The next several weeks were spent tatting the specimen, creating the pattern using Inskscape, testing and re-testing the written pattern and reaching the final outcome.

The project is known as Endrucks 1920 Project and is housed on Facebook.  It was begun in 2015 when Tatting Expert Georgia Seitz approached another Tatting Mentor known as Muskaan to tat one of the patterns pictured in the publication.

There is a particular twist on this story: Eleonore Endrucks' work is printed in an Old German Gothic font and rather than giving written patterns, the publication consists of mostly photographs of the works and a rather general description of the way she created each piece.  They are unique in their own right.  But with directions that are challenging to first read and then to carry out, the creation of each design is largely left up to anyone who can look at a photo and carry out the design.

The group was formed and was joined quickly by Ninetta Caruso, Martha Ess (who first scanned and donated the publication to the Antique Pattern Library, in the public domain), Vicky Clarke and many others.  Since that time, a wealth of patterns has sprung off the nimble fingers of many of the 2000 members.  To date, I have contributed several patterns or variations of patterns myself.  The most recent one being completed with the help of Muskaan during the past winter months.  It's titled "January Snowflake" and complete pattern can be found here.  

Since this pattern was completed, my husband and I have begun migrating our posessions to storage while we prepare to relocate nearer to our son and his family.  I do so miss my craft space which has been dismantled and tucked away for safe keeping.  But tatting is quite portable and I have good projects to keep my "crafter's urges" satisfied.