In Which Threads are Cut and a Few Tears are Shed Over the Baby Bonnet.

I did know there would be problems in putting together a piece with so little instruction to go on (I am not THAT naive), but I must admit I didn’t expect to hit them this early.  The instructions say that for the first 6 wheels you join them by two rings at a time while tatting them so that’s what I did. It looked like the more difficult part would come later so I figured I just tat those first 6 wheels and sort through the next part when I got there.

Unfortunately, lacking any instruction to the contrary I assumed that they should be joined straight.  The two rings opposite the previous joining pair being the pair of rings that would join one wheel to the next.   Last night, MUCH closer inspection of the only picture of the bonnet showed that, sadly, this is not the case.  Here again is the only picture of this project in the book.  I’m going to make it super large so it’s easier for you to see what I’m about to explain.

I’m also going to give the instructions again so you can see what we have to work with.

I’m assuming that the “row of six wheels” they talk about is the front part of the baby bonnet.  There is only one picture of the “join by two rings” but I assumed that the following wheel would be joined by the two rings opposite the first.  This gives you 4 rings on either side between the wheels.  The problem came with I started looking carefully at the joining of the two wheels on the very top of the bonnet.  I’m calling the wheel on the first row wheel #3, counting up from the closer side of the row.

I assumed the top wheel in the next row would be joined to wheel #3 by two rings like the first.  There are 3 picots on each of the outer rings and it appeared that one pair of rings was joined by the center ring and one pair by two of the outer picots.  That’s what got me to look closer where I realized the two wheels were actually joined by 3 rings, not two.  Problem is, that if there are only 4 free rings on wheel #3 on the inside between wheels #2 and #4 this meant they would be pretty uneven.  You can see the negative space filler between where #3 is joined to #2 and where it’s joined to the inner wheel.  BUT on the very edge of the bonnet it still looks like there’s ANOTHER negative space filler between wheels #3, #4 and the inner wheel.

I don’t know if any of this is actually making sense.  It’s hard to write it out in a way that’s clear, but suffice it to say that the first row is NOT straight and my little set of 7 wheels was totally wrong.  So I stared at it for a while and then took the scissors to wheels #2 and 4 leaving me with two sets of 2 wheels and one wheel by itself.  So not TOO much lost (hence only a FEW tears).  I’ve also decided that since this is really just a practice run and I don’t expect the finish product to look decent anyway from now on I’m not going to join the wheels as I go.  Instead I’m just going to tat up a whole bunch of them (the pattern doesn’t even say how many the finished bonnet should have), then I’ll join them just by tying the picots together so I can easily rearrange them without having to tat more.  I’ll probably join the negative space fillers as I go though since there’s not much tatting to those and I don’t mind cutting them up.

It’s funny, the first line of the instructions say that “two balls of crochet silk will be needed”  I don’t know how big a ball of crochet silk was in 1915 so I assumed it must have been pretty small.  Afterall, it doesn’t look like this pattern uses very much thread.  Clearly though the authors were expecting that you’d have to re-do the pattern a couple times and extra thread would be needed.

6 Comments »

  1. Fox Said,

    February 3, 2011 @ 1:45 pm

    If you are interested in a bonnet pattern that I got from TattingChic, I can send it to you… It was not a whole lot of fun to tat, but it IS vintage and I did complete it! You can have a look here…

    http://www.tat-ology.com/2010/03/tis-bonny.html

    ♥ Fox : )

  2. admin Said,

    February 3, 2011 @ 2:28 pm

    That’s a gorgeous piece! I love the little bit of color on the mostly white bonnet. I might have to try a color scheme like that when I finally work up the final version of this one.

    What book is it from? I’m going to stick with the Priscilla ones now (I think there’s two bonnets in each book), but I want to bookmark it for later.

  3. Gina Said,

    February 3, 2011 @ 4:49 pm

    Oh..I remember this one. I may have started it and decided it was either way too big or way too small. I’m pretty sure this pattern starts at the crown. Almost all of them do so you have the center wheel and then you join around it, so you could have gone two wheels out radially. Does that make sense? I think you might have been okay but would have had to add some wheels in an awkward way. From the crown, you would not put one at the bottom but …. a drawing would help. I can see that it would be 2 wheels from back to front and it probably joins the crown in six places. You can see 3 of them from the picture.

  4. Gina Said,

    February 3, 2011 @ 4:51 pm

    I think you could also make the 2 rows of 6 wheels and then join one row to the crown wheel as you tat it.

  5. Fox Said,

    February 3, 2011 @ 7:38 pm

    Forgot that you were doing all Priscilla – Sorry! I was focusing on the bonnet part. I am sure you will get this one figured out. : )
    Fox : )

  6. admin Said,

    February 4, 2011 @ 6:37 pm

    Hi Gina, I noticed most started at the crown, but the instructions say the “first” row of six so I figured they must mean for you to do the front first. I think you’re right though, it’s going to lead to some awkward joins. I thought that starting with the front might give me a better idea of how it’s put together since they don’t give many clues, but apparently it didn’t help much. Working on tatting up all the wheels separate for this first proof-of-concept and then I’ll figure out how they go together. I’ll leave worrying about actually tatting it right for the next draft. 🙂

    Hi Fox, Still interested in doing it sometime. I like hats. It’s just going to be a while. 🙂 What book was that one from?

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