New Year - New Design

Happy New Year and I'm off to a stuttering start tatting wise!!!! I'm going to show this design in all it's 'glory' from the very, very start to (with a bit of luck!) it's finish. Below is how I'm teaching myself to start a new pattern. In the past I've started with the picture of what I'm hoping to achieve and just tatted it but over the past year or two I'm gradually changing over to 'drawing' it on the computer first. So, picture number one is the ring with a 'standard' heart in it which I put together and placed on 'layer 2' of my drawing program (SerifDraw Plus).

The next step was to 'draw in' what I think might work on layer one (a bit like tracing). Now, while I'm doing this I think of how it will be achieved and in this case (at the moment) it will have two split chains between SR9 and SR11.

The third step was to turn on the telly, power up the laptop, get two shuttles filled with thread (and in THIS case I know it will have lots of SR's but will have to be worked in one colour) and start with the text. I type in the text as I go then at the end of the evening email it to myself to pick up on the main computer in the morning. I usually use two colours in the first few tryouts so that I can clearly see where I'm going but sometimes I stick to just one. In the picture below you can see that this heart isn't going to work out quite big enough for the ring. I also don't like the arrangement at the top left hand part. In the second drawing I did you will notice that I was trying to achieve a deeper 'dip' in the heart. So many that I've done and seen in the past don't (to my way of thinking) have a very clear outline. This is one of the things I'm hoping to achieve. Later today I shall take what I've done and look at it carefully and re-draw it. I'll add this later.