Free Luna Moth Pattern

You know all that stuff I said I might get to today? I know you're terribly shocked to learn that I did none of it, not a bit. I think I just faded into a zone where I had nothing that really 'needed' cleaning or doing. My motivation to work was completely used up I suppose and I needed a recharge day. Lucky for you though I had already written out the moth pattern and I already had some pictures so here we go.

Tatted Luna Moth Pattern

Some words before we begin. I used size 10 thread and a size 5 needle. On the body portion of the moth I employed the use of reverse/downward facing/inward picots. There are a lot of names for the technique and you can find a simple diagram of them from Jane as a pdf here. They are formed by using the first half of the double stitch twice adding the picot and then using the second half of the double stitch twice. The pattern as I wrote it does not expand into this, just know that the last ds before and the first after the downward picot are formed this way. Also when the downward facing picots are joined to, you will need to pull your stitches off the needle being careful to leave the loop at the beginning of the ring to join to at the end. Joining to the downward picots is simply pulling the needle through them, do not tie, but keep working stitches. When you join close the ring everything should pull together just fine. You may of course omit the inward facing picots entirely and make the body round, but I think it looks nicer the other way.

One more note before I let you have the pattern, To make the wings symmetrical, I started both at the top and tatted the second backwards. I honestly have no idea what the proper term for that is and didn't make an effort to go look. All this means to me, is that I started each chain section with the second half of a ds, reduced the number of full stitches by one and ended each section with the first half of a ds. I found doing this let the wings lay better. Having tried it without doing this as well, there is little difference expect to the perfectionist I suppose so you don't 'need' to do this either. I think that's all the notes I have for you so on we go.

Large moth

body
r - 4ds 1 long picot(antenna) 4ds close, do not turn
r - 1ds 1small picot 2ds 1 small picot 2ds inward picot, 2ds inward picot 2ds picot 2ds join to reverse picot, 2ds join to reverse picot 2ds small picot, 2ds small picot 1ds close, tie and cut.

Cut antenna in two.

Wings
join thread to top small picot on body ch - 20ds close rw ch 7ds close rw ch 2ds 1p 7ds join to next small picot on body do not reverse. ch 7ds join to picot on last chain 7ds close rw, ch 5ds 1p 5ds close rw, chain 7ds join to last picot 15ds join to same picot on body.

repeat for second wing.

You can choose to omit the inward facing picots making a simple r of 1-2-6-6-2-1. This will make for a rounder body though.

Please do let me know if I've made any glaring mistakes so I might fix them and as always this pattern is for personal use or offline sale only. There is of course a small chance that I will add the small moth variation as well as that video of the downward facing picots at some point. I would however not hold your breath. Today, I have one mask left to finish and thank the gods I made a couple of sakes yesterday so I will be getting a couple of things remade as well. You have no idea how much more motivated I am during the day when I have sales to take care of or pieces to remake. Sure,I can survive on the energy between especially when I'm designing, but only for so long before that malaise I described above kicks in. One last note, if you are facebook sort of people, I will be having yet another giveaway and a Halloween sale through my fan page if and only if I manage to increase my fan/like numbers to 1000. I know it's gimmicky, but no numbers no giveaway. There are over 125 left to get, so again no breath holding, but I thought I'd give you a heads up. The link to the page is on the left of the blog.