As usual I have been flipping between projects so it should surprise no one that I haven’t done anything new on the big projects that my two previous posts were about. Still been tatting, of course, and here’s what I have been doing:
So what is it? Well, I’m not sure. I started it with one purpose. Hit a snag and decided that it would be something else. Now I’m going back to the first. Physically, it’s a very long piece of a very ruffled edging. Here’s a close up:
I’m not actually sure how long a piece it is. For the original plan I didn’t need an exact length because the whole thing was going to be bundled together for an ruffle-y effect. So I just tatted up a long length of R3+3-3-3, CH4-2-2-2-2-4. I ran a thread through all the rings so I could keep in all contained while tatting the second row which is the same as the first, except that the rings are R3-3+3-3, joined at the bottom of each ring to picots 1, 3, and 5 of each chain instead of to the previous ring.  (So the 3 rings on the second row for every ring on the first row.)
I’m doing a masters degree in accounting and I worked on this project a lot while in class. It was just the perfect project for class in that it kept my hands busy and gave me something to do, but was simple enough that it didn’t actually take any concentration. PLUS because the final piece was going to be so ruffled, it didn’t matter if I made a mistake because you wouldn’t be able to see it. There’s a few 3+3-3 rings in that second row.
Because it worked so well as a project for class, I’ve been saving it for class and when I had a couple months off from class I forgot about it, even though I’m actually getting close to the end. Like I said, my original plan for what to do with it had hit a snag so there’s been no push to finish it and I didn’t really notice that I had stopped working on it.
The original plan was to use it on this hat frame:
I picked up the frame at the awesome millinery store in downtown LA. I have dreams of one day figuring out a way to cover it with a cool single layer/flat piece of tatting, but right now the various curves of the hat have me thinking that kind of a project would take a LOT more time to design than I want to put in right now. So I thought a cool ruffled edging around the whole thing would be good enough for my “first” hat.
Until I was about half way through the tatting it never occurred to me that this is a hat FRAME and I’d have to figure out some way to cover it. Um… Yeah…
For those who don’t know me, I am not a sewer. I think it’d be cool to know how to sew things and cover hats, but I’m just not willing to put in the time it would take to learn to sew. I just don’t think I would enjoy it as much as I enjoy other things that I’d rather spend my time on. (Like tatting.)
So about half way through an extremely large piece of lace I realized that when I finished it I’d probably just put it next to the hat frame and forget about it for a few years. Not a big loss, because it IS the perfect project to work on in class so if nothing else it’s helped me concentrate during lecture. (My mind focuses much better if my hands have something to do.) So I kept working on it, settling on the idea that maybe I’d end up using it as an edging for a dress or skirt or something. I don’t have a skirt or dress that it would work with, but maybe by the time I finished it I would…
Anyway. I’ve had a couple months off from classes so I set it aside and forgot about it until I stumbled on it a week or two ago. I probably only had another shuttle-full left on it so I started it up again in the interest of actually finishing some of my big projects. I figured I’d finish up the tatting so that I’d be ready to sew it on when I found the right dress/skirt. Then just yesterday mom gave me this:
Not quite the wide brimmed sun hat I had originally envisioned, but the colors match and it’s already covered.
Looks pretty good, huh? Only problem is that now I’ve grown sort of attached to the idea of a ruffled edging along the bottom of a dress or skirt. Guess that as soon as I finish this one I’d better get started on another…