Been busy

 

Life is still a little hectic here, but I am crafting in between everything else.

Finished a tatted bookmark this morning. This is probably the last skill-builder I will do in single shuttle before I do more tatting off the ball.

I have an altoids tin full of tatting mistakes or mis-shaped motifs. I call it my tatting graveyard. Can't throw them away, but can't figure out how to use them. Well, at a quilting group, I pawed through a bag of someone else's cast off scraps and orphan blocks, and came home with this block, which I have tried to embellish in a crazy quilt way, incorporating a few bits from the graveyard tin.

I used machine embroidery, tatted pieces, ribbon embroidery and hand embroidery and spent an afternoon relaxing with this. A couple of notes for the future:

1. The ribbon embroidery will look better if I add that earlier in the process. There was a backing foundation fabric on the block when I got it, and I added batting and second backing. It really tortured the ribbon when I pulled it through all those layers.
2. While the crazy quilt idea was a good use for the tatted mistakes, I think it would work better with fabrics that are less busy than these thirties prints, so I will make up some squares like that next.  
3. I really need to recover my former skill level with hand embroidery at least, and improve it from there. 

So many crafts, so little time, huh?

If you haven't tried tatting, it is a great take-along project. I can fit a small plastic shuttle, a small ball of tatting cotton, the tatted work, and very small scissors into a large tic-tac container like this one.





When tatting off the ball, I put the ball in the container, close the lid, and it is much less fiddly for me than wrapping thread through all my fingers. I can maintain tension on the working thread better, and with a fine thread, it slides through the closure on the container without much effort or any damage to the thread.