detail

It was a pleasure and an honour for me, testing and even writing a short foreword for the new book by Edda Guastalla. Many thanks to her for giving me this opportunity!

That one is a detail of my pochette, all tatted following one of her patterns. Sorry I cannot share other pictures of my tatting, that are all in the book.

I will buy a "paper" copy of the book as a self gift for Christmas! I love "real books", but I  know that in the near future it could be available also in pdf format. It is in Italian (actually I don't know if they are working for a translation too) but there are many clear drawings that are very easy to follow. It is a book for tatters at any level. It's a "big" book, 128 pages, it contains 15 patterns and instructions for tatting many variations. Also, there are diagrams for how using the method of the "magic square" to adapt it also for edgings and different shapes that only squares. That's something that you can't find elsewhere in the Tatternet!

The book is available here:

https://corradotedeschieditore.com/it/home/662-il-mio-libro-dei-quadrati-magici-a-chiacchierino.html

Ciao,

Ninetta

magic square - and AOB

Here it is the square, I'm almost there

Details and pattern are here: the chain does the trick 
The pattern for the little box, that I use as a container for the measuring tape, is by Nancy Tracy, it is here: http://www.be-stitched.com/free-tatting-patterns-3/tatted-box/

I circled with the red line a mistake, that I found too late, a miscounted chain. I called Dr. Downplay again and he assured me that nobody is going to see it 😱😱😱😱😱😱 but me...

Then, here it is the AOB ("any other business") part:

I started another little project, just to have fun. I'm planning another thread, maybe a coloured one, and I think to tat it in a squared shape. In the next picture my first sample with DMC white size 80, pattern is from page 57 of a very old book, by Mrs. Warren from 1868, link is here: http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/pub/PDF/C-GS001Warren.pdf

I changed the old pattern a little, substituting some rings with split rings, so that a "magic pathway" appeared. I will share a drawing soon, I hope.

The bracelet with zoliduo beads is very close to become an UFO, I can't find it, I'm sure I put it in the "here-where-I-will-find-it" place. We always have such a place, you know!

And here it is my net, it restarted after a winter hiding behind the kitchen's door, I hope to finish it for the end of the summer:

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

I'm happy to share with you beautiful photos, too. My DH heard my whines for the "very old" smartphone (6 years) I had and the other day he came home with a present: the new one is great for taking perfect photos of my tatting and flowers, that I love!

Ciao,
Ninetta

autopilot is always off

This is a lovely old pattern and very relaxing, always the same stitches all along.

You'd tat it on autopilot, if you ever had one. I tat by hand and, sometimes, with only half brain connected, so I've to deal with my oversights, untat them when possible, otherwise, if it is nearly impossible, call Dr. Downplay to cheer me on.

Chains are tatted with reverse stitches and reverse order (that also creates front and back side tatting); rings are tatted normally. I love this way, speed up the tatting and the lace is uniform. The square grews in counterclockwise direction.

Ciao,
Ninetta

the chain does the trick

The other day, a dear friend wrote to ask help in tatting a little corner with squared motifs tiled in a beautiful tablecloth, that she found in an issue of  "Il lavoro chiacchierino" (issue 16) by Mani di Fata. That reminded me of something I had already seen, and in fact it is very similar - but with different stitches' count - to another old pattern, from 1917.
Anyway, her question was about how tatting it with less ends to cut, tie and hide, you know that, the same old story. So I suggested many different "magic square" patterns, also the beautiful onion rings' mat by Robin Perfetti (http://tattingbythebay.blogspot.com/2017/06/onion-ring-magic-square-pattern.html). But nothing. She wanted to tat exactly that one from the magazine. So that's how that has started, I added a chain of 4-8-4 and magically the square became a magic square! That's the power of a chain!

Thread is DMC white BLANC, size 100.
(DMC sells 3 hues for white - I've blogged about it here: http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2016/07/wheres-yellow-gone.html )

Well, now I should go on with it, it's a pity leaving it unfinished!
Thank you for the challenge, Oriana!

The similar old free pattern is here: http://www.georgiaseitz.com/dexter3/pg10.jpg

If you would like to look at a beautiful tablecloth, all tatted, you should look at that one by Sue (all posts in her blog, labelled "tatted tablecloth"):
http://hiskid66.blogspot.com/search/label/tatted tablecloth

Tags are a great way to find similar posts in the blog. If you look at the bottom of every page in my blog, you should find the word "Labels", that is the list of tags I used (in brackets there is a count of the number of posts for each tag).
However, on mobiles (and I use it, too) the footer and the sidebars are not visible. That's the reason why I've added another page "(((Blog map)))", it is in the menu in the header bar, with all labels linked. If the number of posts with a certain label exceed the maximum number of post per page, you can read the rest of them as usual, by clicking the button "older posts".
I beg your pardon if you find any inconsistency, and please let me know, with a comment. Thank you very much in advance, to everyone of you.

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

About chains' power, I've added a drawing in Flickr, that is just a summary in one page to show how to close a mock ring, aka SCMR. I should say thank you to another friend (Muskaan) who, in a e-mail exchange, mentioned something about the different ways to make the SCMR, and that helped me to remember a drawing that I did in 2013, but never posted. Thank you, Muskaan!
Direct link to the drawing: https://flic.kr/p/24D988b

My first personal reference are the drawings by Jane Eborall (thank you!!!) here:
www.janeeborall.freeservers.com/SCMR.pdf
and here:
www.janeeborall.freeservers.com/SCMRClosing.pdf
and of course you have plenty of explanations in the GR-8 Shuttles site (by Gary and Randy Houtz): www.gr-8shuttles.com/index.shtml
Gary and Randy Houtz named and popularized the SCMR.

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

Ciao,
Ninetta

pattern for the quad_23 magic square

Pattern is in Flickr:

I've tatted again the version with 4 repetitions, this time in two colours, threads are DMC size 80 ecrù and a shade of light blue but the ball was without the label, sorry.

I've also tatted again the basic square, just because I needed a pic to be put in the pattern, but I don't have a real use for it yet.

Instead, a friend suggested to sew the other one on the pocket of a shirt, I already found one with little light blue dots, difficult to take a picture as those are very soft dots but here it is

I tatted the "inverted square", too. I suspect I wasn't on task, in fact you see in the picture there are two rings not joined and I simply made knots with a spare bit of thread to take the picture.

and here it is the path, MODULE-2- was repeated four times:

I hope that the pattern in Flickr is clear enough. Thank you very much for visiting.

But it wasn't clear enough the pattern for the "star n.2 with tuft picots", for someone commented to ask how to do the OTT join in round E and also how to do the normal join to round C. I've filmed myself with the smartphone and now there's a new video in my channel. Please, tell me what do you think. Here is the link:



Last about this week: I managed to buy the catalogue I was looking for, it is about an exhibition held in Genova in 2006, "Gioielli di filo", beautiful laces, eye-candy 😍 ! But there isn't tatting, sigh.

Ciao,
Ninetta

Related posts

prototypes
Robin's magic tutorial 

patterns for the stars with tuft picots 

Robin's magic tutorial

I've followed with great interest Robin's blog, lately she shared her way to recreate a magic square starting from a repeatable square (here: http://tattingbythebay.blogspot.com/2017/07/designing-magic-squares.html ), I love how she explained everything so clearly, step-by-step, and the entire process fascinated me.

I haven't tried her onion ring magic square, though. It's beautiful! But I was curious to try the process, "to embark on my own magic square journeys" (she wrote these words!).

Thank you very much Robin for the fun!

There's a square of mine that is completed in one round and it actually needed a "revision". You may don't know but the most difficult part about designing is correcting your own pattern, when you are stuck and don't now if one double stitch would improve it or get it worse. So I did many tests with this little square, I even used one version in a mat that I gave to my mum (the picture of the square is "quad_23" in the album "granny's squares" in Flickr here: https://flic.kr/p/ou5tHa and here it is the finished mat: http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2016/02/prototypes.html).

I updated the pattern eventually and I like it more, I changed the length of two chains and that made a good difference. I'll share the pattern, sorry it's not yet drawn. Thread is DMC size 80, color number Light Peach 754. Then, following Robin's tutorial, I obtained my quad_23 magic square:

But then I wanted more. It seems that these magic squares are addictive, one is never enough!
Playing with Apps is always fun, just like Robin says the "virtual" tatting saves a lot of time and I was curious to see as soon as possible the bigger square. I downloaded an App called "Photo Collage editor (by Zentertain)" in my smartphone and I had the next picture in an eye-blink!

I can see the inverted square and other squares too! But I don't know if and when I will try them all!
The actual tatting is very little, but I like it and I'm going to try it in two colors.

This week I also finished the Sardinian Bosa filet lace, so I'm ready for the weekend we will have in October with the Maestre who are coming again from Sardinia.

(see the frame with my work started last year here: spare wheels  and the embroidery finished but still on the frame here: don't lose the keys (and the tatting, too) )

Ciao,
Ninetta

Related posts

prototypes
spare wheels 

flatten the dough!

A rolling pin for tatting would be very well welcomed by more than one designer.
Why doesn't it lay flat? Rather a bewitched square than a magic one. I don't like blocking, so I should find a solution. It looks like it's squared in that pic, but it isn't.

There's a proof that shows that something won't lay flat, that is if you fold it in half the folded edge is curved. I've used that trick in my own designs.

 For example, I used it when I designed the square "quad_5" that lately has been tatted by Sue (http://hiskid66.blogspot.com/2016/02/2015-25-motif-challenge-17-quad-5.html)

Well, I'm wondering if I should tat the magic square again, adjusting my tension, OR if I should reduce the lenght of chains in corners (changing the traditional pattern, then).

What do you think? I need the square for a "Springy" tattingram, then my next challenge is: how can I tat a parallelogram in one piece using the magic square progression?

Ciao,
Ninetta

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far far away

I'm far away from a little shawl's size, that one yellow in the pic it is a square (it's folded in half) about 70x70 cm, my triangle today has its long side about 30cm.

Prediction? it's another long run project, like the Sardinian Filet, that I started in October and hope it will be ready in one year. Which one is going to be finished first? the shawl or the filet?

I visualise the pattern like a series of triangles, it grows a triangle at a time, then the size doubles when you pass from a triangular shape to the next triangular shape.

Ciao,
Ninetta

dirty, already!

White and silk it's not a wise choice, it's already dirty, despite I always wash my hands before picking it up.
I like it and the pattern it's demanding but very addictive, I haven't tatted anything else in 5 days.

The dotted line is the growing direction for the pattern, it grows one triangle at a time, but at the end of every triangle I should decide what to do: the next triangle will double the size (and the time to tat it!). I'm lucky, very few mistakes till now.

Do you imagine that with some layered flowers? And a fringe with little shining beads? They can be added later, there's a ton of tatting to do before I reach a little shawl's size!

The idea of layered flowers come to me from a lace that I absolutely love, the Venetian needle lace, but I can't do it. When we went to Venezia, last summer, we didn't go to Burano (it's an hour from Venezia) for lack of time but I bought a booklet with a bit of that lace history and many pictures. I visited  Burano in 1995, at least I managed to go there once! I've had some opportunities to see the lace in person, for example last year in Zagarolo (I talked about it here in the blog: http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2015/05/trapped-in-repetitions.html). I remember there is a piece also in Modena (north Italy) at the "Palazzo dei Musei" (a building from XVII c. that is itself a piece of art). I also bought a catalog there, many years ago (I found a review of that: http://www.annatextiles.ch/book_rev/rev2003/r2003gand/r2003gan.htm). In fact in Modena there's a unique collection with many cut pieces of handmade lace and fabric, collected during the second half of 1800, when the industry started to compete with artisans in patterns and techniques. Many fragments are clearly cut by scissors because industry owners used to exchange samples. If I remeber well, and I should check again into the catalog, just to be sure, there is no one piece of tatting.

I'm so sorry that the picture of the back cover of the booklet it's not as clear as I hoped!

Ciao,
Ninetta

doable

I'm trying to use up the silk I've got (hope I don't waste it), I'd love tatting something similar to a beautiful shawl I saw here:  http://www.georgiaseitz.com/younkin/younkin.html. Maybe, a cotton thread would have been more collaborative, but it's working, it's "doable". I can't keep that silk for ages, after all, waiting for the right project. What else all that silk would be for?

That silk was bought at the beginning of 2014 (http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2014/03/got-into-mess.html) and I tried it single thread and also doubled. Actually the first time I didn't liked it single thread, too thin, but after having tatted a size 100, I think it's comparable (well, I can hardly see ds, I confess!).

In that pic it is near the Priscilla's border in size 100 DMC cotton, tatted last summer.

I haven't followed the pattern given for the shawl, because rings were way too little with my thread. I'm tatting rings 9-9 and chains are 6-6-6 (and short chains are 6ds), I'm trying to follow the flow of rings and chains, not so easy and I help myself folding in half what I already tatted and guessing what I should tat next, that works for me!

The big difference between the cotton and the silk, sigh, it's the smoothness: like me and me speaking in English! In this blog post I needed some of the lively and colourful words that Fox used about the Lizbeth size 80 (a teasing thread for me too, sometimes); English words that I can't recall in this moment, but that's due to my silly brain that doesn't collaborate, it insists thinking in Italian!

The silk easily frays and retrotatting is a mess (reopening a ring already closed is a mission impossible). I forgot to join at a certain point but I chose to tie a knot instead of cutting an hour of tatting.

I'm confident that it will have an end, or as a shawl for a Barbie doll or for only one shoulder of mine, but it will be done!

Ciao,
Ninetta

tatting... what?

There's a purse with my UFOs somewhere in the home that seems to appear from time to time, then you spell the famous phrase "I put it here so I can easily find it" and the bag disappears, magically.

The last time, it gave back 4 squares already tatted and two balls of thread, one of these revealed itself the wrong colour's number, but very very similar (that's the risk with UFOs, you forget to remember yourself your ideas, if ever you had one). I should remember to write me something like a "delivery note", that can be really useful.

Luckily, I wrote a post (http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2014/12/so-far-so-good.html) with stitches' count and the rough pattern is jotted on my notebook, too. It is "quad_23" in the album "granny's squares" in Flickr (the link to the album is in the page "Tutorials and sets in Flickr" from the menu bar).

Did you spot the missed join? It's Harold Finch's fault (watching "Person of interest", a TV series).

These little motifs are the tatted daisy by Mrs. Odum but I changed the stitches' count, they will go inside transparent key-holders. Thread is Lizbeth size 80.

What tatting next? If, by any chance, I find again the UFOs' bag, there's an edging and the xmas' doily started in December. Then I found a shawl tatted with the magic square pattern, used for a bride, it's spectacular (see it here: http://www.georgiaseitz.com/younkin/younkin.html). I should buy the thread first or maybe I can use that silk that I bought two years ago... Then there's the rings' pillow that I wish to tat for my second son (at page 8, fig.23 of  Priscilla Tatting book #1). Then ... who knows?

Do I need tatting patterns? I've just had a look on google! And you?

I love exploring tools in internet and (well - OK - I'm a bit late) I've just discovered Google Trends, a site that everybody can use to explore how much and where in the world a topic/subject is searched on Google. I've entered "tatting lace", of course, and found that the general interest is decreasing in time (from 2004) and the most frequent query is for tatting patterns. What is your feeling? I think that in general that's positive because there's many who wants to tat something new or wants to learn to.  Another thing I noted is that tatting is listed as a possible "subject" while crocheting or knitting are "hobby" for Google Trends. Someone should tell them.

So I started my query with "tatting lace patterns". I had 438.000 results in 0.28 seconds! A diligent tatting computer indeed! The first in the list of results it is the tatting page at Allcraft: http://allcrafts.net/tatting.htm .  I love that page, I've already tatted something from there, for example the Christmas Berry Wreath (http://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2013/12/surprising-softness.html).

Anyway, no matter what the to-do list contains, tatting is or should be always done with enthusiasm and joy, that's the better way to face any tatting plan for 2016! At least that's my excuse to have failed to tat 10 bookmarks in 2015! I have only one real challenge in my life for the end of this year: to reach the Level 16 in the "Online game to end hunger" (follow the link in the upper right sidebar)!!! My best is only the 8th!

Ciao,
Ninetta

UPDATE: link for the shawl by Jean Younkin: https://web.archive.org/web/20010305213435/http://www.georgiaseitz.com/younkin/younkin.html