Ornament

Another quiet day in the shop so I set my sights on another task that I had been honestly stalling over. You see last year I made Jane's lovely Flurry Snowflake as a gift for, well everyone. I glittered them up and made fancy hangers and I was quite proud of myself. The problem was I couldn't do that two years in a row. While I'm certain there are a few people on the gift list that would love more than one tatted snowflake, I'm pretty sure they are an exception. So this year I need to design something new to give out to the husbands work friends mostly and I had decided on a nice big round ornament in red and green.

Having no idea where to begin, I sat around with pattern books for a while waiting for inspiration to hit. Luckily it didn't take long before I saw one element that would go nicely with another element. Rather than just piece two existing patterns together though, I decided to go more with an inspired by those elements and design them straight from the ground up. I started with a fairly standard rose motif expect with the long extra picots at the center. Then I went with a clover with a big center ring for stable joining. This is my first go at the design all in black. Can you see the mistake I just made and didn't notice until after I took the picture.

Initially I thought I'd do the whole outer row in green, but I thought it had more of  Christmas rose or holly look if I kept more of it red, so with the final piece I worked the clovers and rings as split rings. A pain in the neck to be sure, but it allowed me to much more easily add the green as just the outside chains. Yes, I am aware I could have worked the outside as designed with two colors but then I'd have those little tie blips and the two threads would have been even more of a pain in the neck than split rings. I chose the lesser of two evils.

I have no intention of listing these for sale in the shop. I used to make and sell snowflakes in the winter, but there are so many other tatters out there making and selling holiday decorations that I really don't see the point of adding mine to the already saturated market. What I am thinking about doing is writing up the pattern to either list or give away. Though I'm still wondering if I should write it up for one color and the split ring version or just the one color version. One color is clearly easier and I am fundamentally lazy. Speaking of patterns though, thanks for the feedback on the ring pad technique. I will put forth the effort at the beginning of the year to put together a tutorial and/or video for that.

Today I will likely make a couple more ornaments though I'm almost out of this green and it's old thread so that will probably be the end of them in these exact colors anyway. Then I will again cross my fingers for sales because I still have much holiday shopping that needs to be done and unfortunately I just can't tat a gift for everyone. Many will not be impressed nor delighted by that, they'll just think I'm cheap, so I need other people to buy some of my lace so I can get them what they actually want. It's a vicious cycle.