Lace Maille

Well, everything looks okay around here now. I honestly couldn't believe how off my entire day was without the ability to start with a blog post. In a few short years this has become a vital part of my weekday routine, so thank you for being part of it. Now on to the tatting as I have a bunch of it to show you.

I had mentioned on Friday that I had an idea for the next big show piece. I was inspired by a vintage high neck stole I saw on etsy, so I searched about for a starting motif, something to give me a theme to work off of, when I stumbled upon a small square in an Italian magazine I was gifted. It wouldn't work for the big project, but it would work for another I had been contemplating. I had purchased a vintage necklace that kind of looked like chainmaille with links instead of just rings and I had been wanting to replicate it. I had not found the right size and shape motif, until now. This was the first build up using the motif and tatting it directly together. I did muck with the original pattern just a bit, but since I can't actually read the pattern in Italian, it's all a bit of a guess anyway.

I had initially intended on making the piece huge, but as I reached the sides, I decided that there could be two pieces made with the same structure so I opted to make this first piece simpler and likely easier to wear. This version sits a bit lower on the neck and closes with an adjustable clasp. No, it's not listed yet. Remember I mentioned that I got my neck punctured by kitten claws? It is healing fairly fast as they were luckily just punctures, not scratches, but I definitely wasn't camera ready at this point in the weekend.

Once this was done, I had some reevaluating to do. The motifs hang just fine together in this iteration, but I wasn't so sure they would do well in the larger version. The necklace this is based off of is joined by rings and the links don't all hang perfectly straight, but shift about to hang in whatever position they need to. So after consulting twitter, I further modified the pattern and decided to hang them together with silver jump rings. I spent nearly all day Sunday tatting motifs as the necklace continued to grow. At the point of this photo, I just had a couple more motifs I wanted to add to the back to flesh out the design. I had toyed with going another round, but at that point it really would just be a show piece and fairly unwearable. I may still go there of course, but I had a plan for this one to fancy it up too.

Crystals. Actually 100 of them sewn into the lace, four on each motif. For this photo I just set the crystals in place to see if the plan was going to work. I'm pretty sure it will be one heck of a statement necklace when I'm done. I am also still toying with the idea of dangles of some sort from the edge of the piece. Again, the necklace I am working from has small discs dangling from the edge. Of course that necklace is dramatically smaller than this piece. I still might give it a go and just see how it would look, but with all the crystals, it may not need anything else to make it over the top. I also have plans to use this same motif for several other pieces. I've already got the earrings worked out in my head and then there will likely be a bracelet and I'm even kicking around the idea of ankle corsets, but I haven't really thought about the logistics of that yet. I do so love how a simple motif can inspire so much creation, don't you?