Coats second attempt

After giving up on the green Coats doily (here's the picture of the doily) because I was going to run out of thread and (mainly) because I didn't like all the fussy picots I went on a high level dive into my stash!!!

I knew I wanted to stick to size 40 thread but also that I needed quite a lot of it too. 

Fortunately I found this gorgeous Coats thread which is old but still fine and that's what I've decided to use. 

I've eliminated all the picots on the rings but have kept them on the chains on the outer row. Why? Well because it'll be easier for joining purposes later!!! Now somebody mentioned working out the joins by scanning the picture and enlarging it. I've already got the full pattern (and all my other leaflet patterns) digitised but when I tried to do this with the Coats one and enlarge the motifs it came out too fuzzy so I'm going to have to work it out from the text alone!!! 

That'll keep me quiet for a while!!

Book sale part 2

All yesterday's leaflets are now spoken for - thanks, folks.


Following on from yesterday here are the rest of the booklets.  


Must quickly mention the Learn to Tat book (330) as it was from this (pages 6 & 7) that I re-learnt how to hold and manipulate the shuttle almost 20 years after I'd started tatting.  As I picked up the craft from my gran (she was learning too) the way of holding the shuttle was never mentioned!!!!  I'd lent my copy of 330 to somebody I was teaching and she pointed these pages out to me!!!!!

6.   Coats Tatting number 469

7.  Learn to Tat number 330

8.  Coats Time for Tatting number 813

9.  Coats Learn Tatting number 1088

10.  Coats Ten Tatting Designs number 1127

Tomorrow there will be three more leaflets which you may be interested in too - they will be £1.00 ($1.50).

More books which have to 'go'!!!

I have more books (tatting and crochet) that I picked up for a good price.  If you want them just leave me a comment or email me.  The prices (without postage) are below each picture.  If you're going to the Fringe Element Tat Days in a few weeks time I can bring them with me.

Coats Edgings in Crochet book 772 - price £1.50.

 Coats Time for Tatting - price £2.00

 Coats Crochet Design no. 295 - price £1.00

Gun Blomqvist and Elwy Persson - price £4.50

The finished Coats doily

Here it is in all it's 'glory'.  Actually before anybody asks I will tell you where it is now - yes, in a box in a cupboard never to see the light of day again!!!!

Some details.  The cloth was made in size 40 Coats thread (old balls that have been hanging around for years) and measures around 23" in diameter.  The pattern is in a Coats leaflet (number 684) which can still be found occasionally online.

I do have another project on the go to take with me to craft groups etc and will show you that another day. 

Moaning Monday

Goodness knows how I manage to get through life with the way my brain works!!!  

Last week I wanted an 'easy to do' long term project that I could sit and do without too much thinking during the 'silly season'. 

I remembered a large doily pattern by Coats that I'd made around fifty years ago but I've no idea what happened to it - the doily, I mean.  I know my gran was impressed that I wanted to do it!!!  Anyway I'm not sure whether it lay flat or not.  I did start an even bigger one from an old House of White Birches leaflet many years after that which I know didn't lie flat and it got thrown away when it was already huge!!!  Nowadays I'd have made sure that I amended the stitch count so it wouldn't happen.

I digress and apologise.

So the search for this small Coats booklet started but it led to many things.  In the end we parted with all the cookery books we owned and other odds and ends of books too (the charity shop were VERY pleased to receive them) so now I have a huge area just for my tatting stuff.  It's truly wonderful.  

Now to the stupid part of this.  I DID find the leaflet and then realised that I'd already scanned all my Coats and Penelope booklets onto my computer!!!  Now how STOOOOOOOPID is that?

Answers on a postage stamp please!!!

Here's the doily pattern I was looking for.

Book sale part 3

These are the final three leaflets - these are £1.00 ($1.50) plus post and packing.

11.  Coats leaflet number 988

12.  Coats leaflet number 461

Finally there's a crochet leaflet again from Coats and numbered 1087

A mystery

Well it is to me anyway. 

A week or so ago I spotted this shuttle on Fleabay. Whoops, I mean Ebay. I looked at it and wondered. As it was a BIN (buy it now) I flipped it into my basket and bought it.

Now I grew up using the original Milward black shuttles with the separate hook and know that they were made not far from where I live. Then the Aero was 'born' with the hook and bobbin and I converted to that (eventually) and never looked back. It was also made 'just down the road'. 

Now this new one has the Milward name on it and is blue and modern and made in Germany. Milward and Aero are related and Aero were re-located to Germany many years ago but what are these companies up to trying to confuse an OG? Does anybody know anymore about the Milward/Aero/Coats relationship?

I've just found another one like mine but in yellow on Fleabay (cheaper too, darn) and am now wondering if this is Pony (do NOT like their shuttles) who are now re-branding? The seller bought the blue one from a store near her a few months ago so that answers one question - it's new. She also said the shop was closing the haberdashery department due to Coats UK ceasing trading. Can the news for us crafters get anymore dire?

Green Coats motifs

So I got a move on with this Coats design.  Here is the centre of this pattern (see below) and this is what it's finally going to be.  Well, that's a lie because it's not!!!

I know that if I go any further I'll run out of thread but that's not the only reason.  I really don't like it as it's too fussy for me. It took me a long time to work out the joins too as it's written in 'old fashioned' notation. This form of writing patterns was what I started the craft with and they were no real problem back in those days because they were all the same.

I remember that there was one very pretty butterfly in a French book that I have which, of course, I had to translate to English first.  In those days computers weren't thought of and I had to work it all out with a pen and paper only to find that there was a big mistake in it!!  So that's why I'm wary of the old notation now!!!  I digress.

I will now look for another colour of thread that I have plenty of in my stash and will start again but with  a LOT fewer picots!!!

How and why I learnt to tat

Before I start - there are a few shuttles left in my Etsy shop.  Not many, but a few!!!!

Several people have been talking about how and when they learnt to tat but I've done a post on this before - some four and a half years ago.  Rather than repeat myself (which Nick says I'm ALWAYS doing!) I'll give you the link.   

Enough to say that a bit more water has passed under the bridge since I wrote that post!!!!  Doesn't change the facts, though.  I'm older (now 67) and not a lot wiser!!!  A lot has changed during those years since I learnt (and since I posted that piece) and a some things haven't!!!

Rings have stayed and chains too.  Notation has moved on a bit too and also the thing that I craved more than anything as a teenager - colour has arrived beautifully.  There were so few colours in the Coats threads and they were pretty darn boring.  

Antimacassars, collars, doilies, hanky edgings and motifs were all that were 'on offer' in the Coats and Penelope leaflets. 

I remember the times when I took great risks with my craft.  Long before the internet I found the odd advertisement in magazines telling of goodies available in the USA.  Things I NEEDED to have.  The Mary Sue Kuhn books were a 'must have' with an intriguing 'new idea'.  This was, of course, the 'how to do' a split ring.  Something we all take so much for granted nowadays.  Originally from Anne Orr this lass called Mary Sue had taken something nobody seemed to have put much store by and woken up tat land (well my little corner of it!!). In those 'far off' days I used to buy dollars at the bank (for a price!), put them in an envelope and 'hope' they got to the right place in that far off country and hoping too that I got the goodies back!!! 

I got quite a few books and the odd tools (like the jiffy needles) that way including some netting books. Now all these things are a click away - boy, have things changed.


Heck, I'm rambling again - must be a sign of old age.  I'm off for a shower!!!!

Carrying on with the Coats motifs

In the evenings and when I'm not knitting I'm continuing with the Coats mat which I started back here.

I'm using size 40 thread and I'm not sure I'm going to have enough.  I'm also not sure I even like what I'm doing either!!!!  

Coats doily again

Well I also found time to get the border of the Coats doily done and I must say that I'm pretty pleased with it. 

I have oodles of this thread in size 40 so I will continue on my merry way. It's going to be my 'take with me' project when I go to the craft groups so it will be a long time in the making!!! 

I'll add another picture of the completed doily which will now become a cloth just so you can feast your eyes on what it will look like - one day!!!

My Personal Tatting History

It's now about 50 years since I learnt the craft of tatting.

When I was eleven years old I was allowed to go on the first ever school trip run by Broad Street County Primary School to Belgium. I remember that it cost my mum and dad the tremendous amount of thirteen pounds and ten shillings. I knew I was very lucky to be able to go as I had a younger brother and sister who would also be going in future years. This was probably my very first lesson in 'how expensive' things are!!! A lesson which was well learnt and has stayed with me throughout the rest of my life!

We travelled to Bruges and one of the things I saw was this lady making lace.

This made SUCH an impression on me that for the following two years I nagged and nagged about learning to make lace. I must have been a real pain!!!

In 1956 my gran then aged about the age I am now, decided to go to tatting classes at the old Technical College in Henley Street here in Stratford upon Avon. She wasn't really sure whether she wanted to learn or not! Gran was an extremely good artist but never did a lot after her marriage.

Anyway, after her first lesson she asked if I'd like to learn. Woweeee, nearly, nearly bobbin lace!!! I went to her house and we sat down to try this new fangled craft out. Oh dear, gran had forgotten about the flip!!

To this day I clearly remember seeing what should happen and together we got it under way. Many, many hours we spent together swopping ideas, patterns etc. My pocket money was spent on the only threads we could get hold of - white and ecru (Coats) and the old Coats & Clarkes books and Penelope Books were our only source of patterns at that time. We did manage to borrow a Norma Benporath book from the library (they had found one in a library up north somewhere) and this was very inspiring.

When my gran was just into her seventies she decided to take a trip round the world to meet her brother whom she hadn't seen for fifty years because he'd emigrated to Australia. Whilst she was over there with him she advertised on TV and radio asking for copies of the Norma Benporath book and she managed to get one good copy. I now have this and an original Mrs Beeton's book (also gran's) in my possession.

In later years I learnt bobbin lace, knitted lace, crochet, netting and filet but throughout I have always, but always tatted!!! I've done a lot of sewing and patchwork too in the past.

They're coming to take me away!

I'm happy to report that thanks to Riet's kind advice the policeman has gone. Thanks, Riet, the cup of tea worked just fine. The problem was that a neighbour reported that young master Tatbead had been seen throwing his mother's special and much valued Georgia Seitz shuttle at her windows.

New neighbours are now arriving in the area - http://tinyurl.com/2l7ehb Pamela Myers has arrived with her Irish brownie (well, only the Irish could have 'brownie's' that wear yellow and navy!!!). Jessica's Polly Tatbead (based on the mouse) has arrived too. That beak looks quite fearsome if you get too close. I'd love to know if Polly's a talker - is she, Jessica?

A few days ago Sue Hanson mentioned that the men in white coats would be coming for me if I carried on living in tatland. What she doesn't know yet is that the two Goths (probably still travelling to London) have been on their cell phones and reported the happenings in the family. The men in white coats have now arrived. Heeelllllppppp!!! The story could end here!!!! They're coming to take me away to the happy farm!!!

Mother Macaria has sent spiritual advice too. That's something they all need. Don't worry Mother Macaria - all is now under control.

HEY, who's that just flown in? Does she remind you of somebody? Any suggestions? Who can suggest a name? I've got one idea which begins with an 'S'!!!!!!!

Ooooh look at this

It's lovely when people send in pictures of what they've made out of my patterns. Makes me realise that somebody actually does use them!!! 

This is the square pattern that you can find here and which Jaycee sent in to show me yesterday. It's amazing how very pretty it looks made in just the one colour - I'd not thought of that. Here's what Jaycee says:-

"Dear Jane,

I tatted your Square Motif and was fascinated that it looks even better in a plain colour - though I also tatted one in 2 colours. The one colour truly shows off your lngenious design and it looks so dainty with 4 squares joined together! I am enjoying working these squares tremendouly and I can assure you that I won't stop at 4!!!

Here it is - done in size 60, Coats 503."

I DID IT!!!

After a week of walking past the shop gazing at the shoes (well sandals, actually) I finally went in and bought them.  This is a small record for me as I have been known to mather for weeks and weeks and weeks!!!  Of course I now have to get past the 'they're too nice to wear - I'll keep them for best' bit!!!  Another thing I have to come to terms with is slinging the old sandals!!  This is SO, SO hard to do for me!!!!  Is it cause I'm a war baby (born in 1943) or is it cause I'm just plain parsimonious?!?!?!?  Send for the men in white coats!!!!

Anyway I haven't got much to show you but I did get these two done last evening.  

The purply blue one has a tag on saying it belongs to 'Jane' and is made from a yarnplayer skein that was in the 'oh my gosh' package from Sue Anna.  I would be willing to make one like it if anybody wanted a similar.  The browny one (knitty gritty is the name of the thread, I think) will be the start of my 'travelling stash' of brooches to take with me over the pond. 

The purply one is also made from a yarnplayer skein that was in the oh my gosh package. 

Another day - another dangle!

First of all - thanks to everybody who left comments on yesterday's blog.  I've decided that I will share the tree pattern (and, of course, the sequin one) with the hope that I can sell a few trees online.  It occurred to me that I might just wake up dead one morning and then nobody would quite know how to make them and that would be a shame.  Anyway, I love them SO much that it would be hard to not share.  All I need now is the time to do the web pages for both (the pattern for the trees is very simple and short but will need some careful diagrams to explain how to make the branches).  

I'm still making roly poly bags and they are selling as fast (almost!) as I can make them with special 'private' orders arriving every so often too.  I think I've done about 58 now!!!!  These are taking precedent over the computer during the day!!!

So yesterday evening I tried a new thread combo!!! This time I used the 20 thread for the inner round which contains the sequin. Then I doubled up some Coats & Clark Star Machine Quilting & Craft thread that I bought in Cincinnati last year. The colour range in this thread is great. Some lovely bright colours. It's a size #50 (which is not a 50 as in crochet thread) and is an Egyptian cotton.

Well I doubled this and used it for the dangle below. To double this I wind an Aero bobbin about a third of the way and then make a loop without cutting the thread and wind back onto another bobbin from the original one and the spool. This means that when I've finished I've a continuous thread left on the bobbin to wind back onto the ball - IF I want to. There is so much yardage on a spool (1200 yards) that I doubt I will ever run out!!!  

Oh, this motif did fit one of Sue's bangles - EUREKA.  This evening I will see how a number 80 (or thereabouts!) works out!!!!

Two pairs of earrings

I'm very pleased with the orange and blue pair which I'll start testing today by wearing them. The other pair is worked in a number 40 Olympus (variegated) and a 40 Coats (?) but isn't as 'firm' as the others. Again I will test this pair out another day. They may be fine slightly stiffened. I think I may try another pair with drastic alterations to the stitch count and using a single number 80 thread. I feel it's worth playing with these a little longer!!!

Another one

I just don't need any excuses to tat this pattern. Not sure why but I just totally love it.  Actually, I'll be honest, I love all Rosemarie Peel's work and particularly her celtic designs.  She was the first person to do celtic tatting.  By that I mean the sort where you make two parts separately, intertwine them and then 'lock' them together with a third round.  Not the later type of celtic where you tat a long chain and 'tie a knot' in it.  OK, it's not that 'simple' but it's just not for me.  I've done one or two celtic designs and am reasonably pleased with them BUT I still think of Rosemarie as the 'Queen of Celtic Tatting'.

This one is made using two size 40 threads. The pale one is a Lizbeth thread and the variegated darker one is an old Coats one.  The beads are a lovely lilac colour.

I really ought to block this one to make the central star show up properly but blocking is something I rarely do!!!!

Thread colours

As you've probably gathered over the years - I love colours.  I've no idea how to work with them and have never studied colour charts or the likes.  I rely on BC3 and just being brave with them!!!  I do think hard about what goes together as I pull them out of the cupboard or thread drawers and usually find that very few 'don't work'!!!  Strangely what looks 'good' on the balls often looks dreadful coming off the shuttle!!!!  Many a time I change my mind!

I've now got a vast collection of Lizbeth threads along with the older generations of Coats, Manuela, Flora, Floretta and many more.  A few weeks ago I 'helped' a friend who was selling her Lizbeth threads off as she's closing her online and 'real life' shop.  I bought threads that I didn't like.  Well, when they arrived, I realised that they were lovely.  Apart from one which is a bit pale for me the rest will get used - eventually!!!!

Below is Denim Whisper (Lizbeth) which I've had for some time.  On the ball I didn't like it.  Not one bit.  When I started working with it I fell in love!!!  Here's a small portion of what I'm working on at the moment and I've paired it up with a plain Manuela (another I didn't like for ages) to get a stunning combination.   

Must send BC3 to 'colour school' for lessons!!!

Something I've been thinking about.

Back when I started tatting in 1956 the only patterns I could get hold of were the old Coats (well, of course, they were new then!) and Penelope leaflets. 

The patterns in there were what I assumed tatting was all about and they kept me quiet for many years. Occasionally I would do a large project and the amount of thread needed was always stated as 'one ball' or 'two balls' of thread.

Sixty years on and people now want the exact amount of thread needed given in the pattern. This is soooooo annoying to me as it does take considerable effort (poor old BC3) to work out how much is needed and then to remember that people's tensions may vary and they may need more or less.   Even more frustrating as thread now costs much the same as it did 'back then' but was to me very expensive when I had to save up pocket money for it.

I struggle to add this to my patterns as I honestly don't see the point of this unless there is only a small amount of thread left on a shuttle or ball. 

I find, personally, that I get more leftovers that are too small to use by using stated amounts and would far rather not have the hassle of feeling I need to give quantities on a pattern. Having said that - I will do my best to continue to provide this - unless it's a doily!!!!

This is, I suppose a contradictory post but that's how discussions between myself (the semi rational part) and BC3 go!!!!  Happy Tuesday, folks!!!!