Thread Warnings

This morning I made it a point to get to my lace meeting a bit early since I'm the new Prez and responsible for opening the door. I got in the main door and got the key out of the box...only to realize I didn't have a clue what it was for. Good thing there are directions posted.

Myself and one other member showed up. Several were on vacation and I don't know about the rest. So while a part of me was thinking "I coulda slept in!". I was glad for the opportunity to do the door thing and get to know Dagmar better.

I decided to empty a shuttle I won on Ebay a month or so ago along with another shuttle by trying out Mary Konior's filet mesh pattern on page 14-15 of Tatting with Visual Patterns.



Whoops....published when I meant to preview.....

Anyway, the black shuttle had some pinkish thread on it in the same size as the blue shuttle. I've tried this filet tatting before but ran out of thread before I got very far. This time it looked like there would be plenty of thread to get a nice size sample done. I learned quickly that the joining picots needed to be VERY tiny. Tension and snugging up the chains are important aspects to the design also. At one point, I thought the thread on the black shuttle was variegated instead of solid and thought the repeats must be very far apart. Guess what? The pink thread was tied to a white thread! Not only was it a different color, it was a different size! Wait...that's not all....it was also a very bad thread for tatting, with hardly any twist or sheen to it. ATTENTION NEWBIES! This is a wonderful example of why you should invest in a good tightly twisted thread. The white thread did not want to slide easily and my stitches kept flipping back so I would have a knot. The tension was impossible to control. I found myself getting more and more frustrated until it was finally time to go.

I won't finish this sample. I did get the hang of the filet mesh with this method. I think there is another method out there somewhere.

Here's a fun page!

I couldn't find a way to save it and use it in any helpful way, but I sure wasted a nice bit of time trying to. LOL!