On Sunday, a friend asked me my opinion on an old tatting pattern. It was "Lacy Twirls of Tatting Chair Set #4605" in Star Book #46.
First, it was written in the style most of the old patterns are (R, 4 d, 3 p sep by 4 d, 4 d, cl r. Ch, 8 d, 3 p sep by 4 d, 8 d, turn.) So I wrote it over into a more readable fashion ( R 4-4-4-4 clr. Ch 8-4-4-8 RW) I changed the "turn" to "reverse work". In my mind, "turn" implies a side to side motion, where "reverse work" implies a top to bottom motion that you would find when switching from a ring to a chain and vice versa. But this pattern had chains coming from rings in both the normal fashion and where the tops were needing to be facing opposite of how they normally would, so you had to "force" the chain and it ends up a little twisted.
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| Chains coming from a ring in the normal fashion |
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| Chain coming from ring "twisted" (the bottom) |
I made a bookmark in the way it was written to get a feel for the pattern.
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| Original pattern |
It was hard to see what the chains and rings were doing, so I switched to having two colors. This shows how the chains end up all the same color and the rings the alternate color. (I did alter the pattern to start in the middle of the end instead of the side so I could leave the ends as a tassel)
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| Original pattern/2 colors |
Next, I made another bookmark where I used 2 shuttles and just switched shuttles when the chain would be forced. This made the chains all smooth, but creates a different look in the 2 color bookmark.
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| Switching shuttles |
Here are all 3 bookmarks together:
I like the look of the "forced" 2 color bookmark best, but if you were making it all one color, I would go with switching shuttles as that is a smoother way of working the pattern. I also thought it would be nice to join the picots on the inside of the bookmark to make it more stable, but I didn't want to take more time to make a 4th bookmark ☺
