Experiment = start over

I absolutely love this heart from Iris Niebach and wanted to use it for this necklace ever since I saw it. I thought I planned it well - I looked over the diagram closely (for a change) and counted how many beads I needed and figured out exactly how to proceed. I wanted to try fishing line for the core thread on the last round, hoping it would help the heart keep shape which meant I would have to switch shuttles every time I made a ring on the last round, which also meant all my beads had to be on my chain shuttle.

I had to block it but it's still flimsy and I don't like the lack of picots around the outside. Plus - you can't see all the hearts within the heart which is much of the charm of the pattern. Hey,all that dimpled ring practice really did help!

So I'm probably going to have to stiffen this one if I want it to stay in shape and I was trying to avoid that because it dulls the sparkle on the beads. Even if I paint the stiffener on, it seems to get on the beads.

I will stiffen this one to see if it helps. I want to make another one now with picots and without the fishing line. I still like the beads, but I may put them on differently. In fact, I think I could put them on the chain from the shuttle and it would be more stabilizing and I could still make picots with the chain stitches.



Here's the heart on its own. By using the fishing line, it makes the edge a bit too inflexible. The front center overlaps itself and the curved edges are supposed to curve more sharply. So I think I didn't help the pattern too much. I did like the dimpled ring hearts where I used a bead in the center. The center dimple section is 7 ds so I just substituted the center ds with a bead.

I still need to make a butterfly for this like the original has. This particular thread is a softer thread - it's a Venus, size 40. A crisper, tighter twist thread would probably not be so floppy either.

Actually, it went pretty fast. I was done this afternoon but had errands to run. I may start experiment #2 yet tonight!



I just figured out part of the problem. This square motif is one of Iris's patterns from her book, Tatting Fantasia. It's made in a size 20 thread and I think I could get by with just a heavy starching on this one. Since the cord is somewhat doubled by the split rings overlapping, the single size 40 thread is overwhelmed by it. I need a bigger thread! I don't have a matching pink in size 20 but maybe I could use one of my variegateds and get a nice complement of color.

Sigh....too late now...I have a very early morning training tomorrow.