My own fascinator

I have designed and made my own fascinator, for my hair, that I shall wear to my son' wedding in September.

The turquoise is an exact colour match to my dress and my accessories are black.

Still here!

Just to let everyone know that I am still here in the background.

My back is too painful for me to sit and tat at the moment, and I am still concentrating on finishing the sugarcraft roses for my son's and futuer DIL's wedding cake, whenever I feel up to sitting long enough, that is!

Everything else has been put on hold at the moment. I am on the waiting list for my spinal surgery.....have been on the 6 months waiting list for 12 weeks....but I am classed as urgent and so could be slotted in at any time. I hope it will be soon so that I can recover in plenty of time for the wedding in September!

Making Sugarcrat Roses

Roses - completed

These are the three sizes of roses that I have decided on for my design of the cake. The only thing that I have to do to them is to dust them with shiny, ivory petal dust, but I won't do this until they are very dry and hard. Now then, back to the next 3 dozen roses! LOL.

I cannot do any more to the cake as it is far too soon. Although rich fruit cake keeps for years, the marzipan colour can leach into the icing if it is done too soon. I always use the natural marzipan instead of the yellow, which helps to minimise this leaching, but I won't take any chances!

Roses - next stage

In this picture I have put three different sizes of the roses, so that you can see how they develope. When I am happy with the size and shape......each rose seems to develope a character all of its own - rarely are two exactly the same.....I finish them off with a green calyx and seed pod. I will post a picture to show the finished flowers.

Wedding Cake Roses

I have not done any tatting for a while now for two main reasons.

One: I have had to travel long distances to see a professor about my back problem and:

Two: I am now in the throws of making my son's wedding cake flowers. The rich fruit cake is already made and maturing nicely. I made it with a half bottle of brandy in the mix, so it should be well matured by the time the wedding comes along in September!

Charlie's bouquet is going to be roses and so she wants roses on the cake.

I start with making a teardrop shaped bud on a wire (as you can see in the first picture). I made 6 dozen centre buds! I then add each petal individually. So far I have done 3 dozen with 4 petals each. Some will stay as tight buds, the others will grow into larger flowers the more petals I put on them, and also increasing the petal size.

I will post more pictures as they develope.

TattingChic's Blogaversary Giveaway

Just in case you haven't heard, Tattingchic is having a prize giveaway for her blog's second anniversay. Why don't you drop by and put in a comment, you could win a lovely prize?

Bridal Headband

Here, as promised, is a picture of the completed bridal headband that is for my future daughter-in-law's maid of honour.
I have made it with exactly the same flowers, motifs, ribbons and pearl tatting as the bride's headdress, but with less in it, to distinguish between the two. Can't have the bridesmaid upstaging the bride, now can we? LOL

Rozella Linden Celtic Wreath

One of our collegues on HBT was having difficulty tatting the Celtic Wreath by Rozella Linden and so I decided to have a go myself.

I found that the first photograph did not correspond with the pattern given, i.e. there were less picots in the rings and more picots in the chains. What I did was to ignore the first photo and worked the pattern in conjunction with the second photo (the centre motif).

There is a slight error in the instructions to join the last ring to the first ring....3 ds have been omitted after the last join.

I made the mistake of trying to tat this with one shuttle and a ball thread....it needs to be done with two shuttles. When doing the first ring of the second round, the first join must be done from the back of the work. The second join must be done from the front and to achieve this you have to put both shuttles through the motif from the back, to the front. When you make the last join, you need to take the ring thread off your fingers and bring the loop through to the front and then put it back onto your fingers, to complete the ring. This then makes the chains automatically cross over one another.

You can see from my pictures that I didn't get the first two chains right!

Tatting Techniques DVD Progress

I have completed all the recording for the new Tatting Techniques video that I am doing...all I have to do now is to edit it, add music and record it to DVD....which as you can imagine, takes much longer than the actual tatting! LOL

This is a picture of the corsage that I have featured on the DVD whilst demonstrating different technques...such as clunies, wired clunies, wired pearl tatting and how to wire flowers.

There are lots of other techniques and tips as well, such as, starting without a knot, up joins, down joins, joins on the second half of a split ring, opening closed rings, beading, split rings, split chains, and probably more that I have forgotten to mention.

Tatting Techniques DVD

I am think of producing a Tatting Techniques DVD and would like to know your opinion. I aready have links to 4 videos that I have on YouTube, but I thought that I could produce a DVD that incorporated all of those plus other techniques, like hiding ends, starting without a knot, clunies, etc., etc..

Do you think that this is a good idea, or are there enough video demos out in tat-land? If you think it is a good idea, what else would you like to see demonstrated?

Stiffening Products

Recently, a fellow tatter, (Gina) very genrously sent me a couple of stiffening products that she thought would help with my 3D projects.
She sent me two products, one a porcelain type that didn't really do the job, (too many problems), and one called "Perfect Sew".
The Perfect Sew was absolutely brilliant! It is a clear syruppy liquid, easy to use......just keep mopping up the stickly liquid that drains off.....and then it dries rock hard. It does not clog the picots at all and dries absolutely clear. I am very impressed indeed and will see if I can get a supply in the UK.
Thank you, Gina, for your tremendous generosity!

Pleasing outcome

My future DIL...for whom I made the bridal headdress and veil (nearly finished) is so thrilled that she has requested me to make a matching head band for her maid-of-honour.

I'm cock-a-hoop about this, because I like nothing better than a really good reason to make my 3D creations!

Will post a picture of the completed veil soon and then the new head band in the future.

Now must get the shuttles moving....busy, busy, busy! LOL

Bridal progress so far

The headdress is now completed and I have used lots of the cluny designs that I have developed recently, together with other of my favourite own designs. Although it looks like a complete circle...it is not. It is open at the back, where the feathers come together on each side. This is where I shall be attaching the Juliette veil....not quite sure how yet, but I'm sure I'll work it out when the time comes!

I have decided to do the "hens and chicks" pattern, that is loved by many, to edge the wedding veil. I am using a size 2o thread with 3mm beads. Now, I know some of you will be thinking that this is rather thick thread for a delicate wedding veil, but in my many years of experience in making wedding veils with beaded tatted edgings, a very fine thread can only be seen when you are very close up to the bride, whereas a thicker thread really stands out from a distance. Also, I have found that thicker thread, together with lots and lots of beads, instead of weighing down the veil, makes it hang beautifully and has less tendencies to be as "fly away" in a breeze.

70th Birthday Card

Here is the card that I promised to blog about in the previous post.

I have also included a picture of the verses inside the card.