More New

After Thursdays surprise productivity I thoroughly expected to slide backwards immediately into a quagmire of non creation, but I didn't. In fact on Friday I managed not one, but two new creations. Both of them came from the pages of a turn of the century tatting book by Anna Valeire. Both of them follow the same concept as my Viva La Reine necklace. I start with a motif and build just a bit on the side and follow with a spiral and split ring chain to create the necklace. I am particularly happy with the first one I'm calling Frivolite De Cercle which translates roughly to circle tatting, I know creative right?

Here's a little factoid for all my non tatting friends. There are two methods for tatting, shuttle and needle. Most modern patterns and nearly all antique patterns are written for either one or two shuttles. Needle tatting is a fairly new technique and has two different ways to mimic the shuttle technique. Most commonly the needle is used to mimic two shuttle patterns and that is the way I do most of my tatting. The method needed to mimic single shuttle patterns such as the one for this motif requires that I cut off a really long piece of thread and is quite cumbersome. Usually when confronted with one of these patterns, I adapt it by adding chains so I don't have to cut the thread. This time I sucked it up and worked with the tangling mess of thread and I'm glad I did.

I think the piece really needed the thread spaces in between the the large and small outside rings. Chains would have been too bulky. The other piece I made up was more basic. It started with a small round motif and I added the same type of chain to create the necklace. I am now completely sick of making the spiral chains so don't expect to see anymore of these anytime soon. I worked on a mask the rest of the weekend and this week looks like I will be working on remaking old pieces again since my creative urge has been all used up, for now.