I Made It Myself

As you may be aware, I am fairly new to the world of tatting. I've only been at it for a few years. A year or so ago I had an etsy friend ask me to deign a piece for them, a large heart. So I did what I always did at that point, I searched the Internet for patterns. I ran across an uncredited picture of a tatted heart, figured out the pattern and made it up in a couple of different colors. After I sent off the one my friend liked I listed the other in my shop. Later I was contacted by etsy who had been informed that the pattern was copyrighted and permission had not been given for me to sell anything made with it. I was mortified, I removed the listed and vowed that I would only use public domain patterns and start creating my own designs.

Flash forward to a couple a days ago when the same request was made of me, except this time the heart needed to fit inside a preexisting shape. Now, I have designed many pieces of jewelry and a few small motifs at this point, but I have never designed something this big. First I tried to draw the design out and when that failed, I just started to design as I tatted. This is the most comfortable method for me. I used scraps of tatting from failed prototypes and laid them around the design until it felt right.




So, here it is my very first large motif. It isn't finished as I still have to hide the thread ends, but it fits just inside the shape and I'm pretty proud of myself. Does this mean that I'm a grown up tatter now? Probably not. I've seen designs that make mine look like stick figures sitting next to the Mona Lisa. I just hope that if I've come this far in just a few year that after a couple of decades of tatting, I am as amazing at it as some of the other tatters I've seen.