Tea Cloth Update!

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on the pattern for Section 1 of the Tea Cloth, but I finally went back and added notes to all the pictures, added some new pictures and generally went through and updated the pattern.  I have some emails out to potential test tatters and a few more to send.  Hopefully, it won’t be long till I have a finished version of the pattern published.

I’m pretty excited about this piece.  It’s going to be on display at LACIS in Berkley, CA at their Tatting Exhibit this summer.  I drove through Berkley in December on my way to San Diego and got a sneak peak at the exhibit while I dropped off my piece.  I’m pretty sure they still hadn’t collected most of what will be on display and it was already an amazing collection.  I can’t wait to see it once it’s actually up and am so excited to be a small part of it.

Of course, this piece that I’ve tatted is only the first (and smallest) section of a MUCH bigger piece.  It’s the tea cloth from Priscilla Tatting Book #2.  The green and yellow piece I mentioned a couple weeks ago is the next section of it.  I’ve seen a version of it at the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale, CA that takes it through section 3 (that was a couple years ago, so I’m not sure if it’s still on display.  Does anyone know?)  Wodentoad on Craftree is doing an amazing job at consistent steady progress and is on the last section of it.  I can’t wait to see how it comes out!  Here’s a link to the forum thread about her progress, though I think you need to log into Craftree to be able to read it.

As I usually do, I’ve been bouncing around with different versions of this project (as well as many other tatting projects).  I’ve got a least 7 versions of the tea cloth started, all in different stages.  One day, I’ll have to collect them all together and snap some pictures.  Some I’ll finish eventually, but some are just trial runs as I am modifying the pattern as I go to make it work for me and for modern techniques and tatting.

Getting this draft of the pattern put together is pretty exciting to me.  I’ve had this goal of rewriting the patterns from the Priscilla Tatting Books and I’ve been working on it for the last few years, but this is the first pattern where I feel like I’ve actually gotten down a work-flow for making the samples, taking and editing the pictures and putting together the patterns.  Hopefully future patterns (from the Priscilla books and others) won’t take me as long to put together now that I’ve figured out a process that works for me!

If you’re interested in test tatting, please let me know in the comments or by sending me an email to jessica(at)snapdragonlace.com