Well these have been sitting around for a couple of days. I wanted to get them made for our secretarys last week but ran out of time so I tried to get them done at the weekend. I have some acrylic coasters I bought at a lace day a few years ago but I can't find the damned things! I did find one but I needed TWO. So they are going to receive them as little doilies instead. This one came from a Japanese book, Tatting, by Yusai Shokoin, page 74. The thread is Altin Basak, size 50, color 3052. I used 2 shuttles and climbed out of each round with a split ring. I plan to make another one in a different color. It's 3" across.

This was going to be my other coaster originally. It does fit in the acrylic one but since I can't locate a second one, I went to plan B. LOL! I really do like this motif though. It is also from the same book, this time on page 71. I used a finer thread, Flora, size 50, color 80. It appears the same size here but it's actually about an inch smaller. Altin Basak size 50 tats up more like size 20/30. Flora size 50 is truly a smaller thread. The pattern has only 5 rings in the center but I could see that wasn't going to work without bowling so I added a 6th ring and it worked out beautifully. Again, I used 2 shuttles and climbed out of each round with either a split ring or split chain. The directions indicated using a ball and shuttle so you have to cut and tie if you do that.

Okay, this was my first attempt at a coaster. I used the motif from here:
Tatted doily with heart motif. I'd like to do it over and see if my tension changes after knowing how it will work out. The inner part of the chain humps on the heart were supposed to be 26 ds. I quickly figured out it needed to be a few less to lay nicely under the second, outer chain with the picots. I had trouble keeping my long picots from twisting too. About halfway though, I was getting the hang of it. It's quite large, about 4" across. I decided it was too open for a coaster. I think this was a size 20 thread but I'm not sure. I'd like to try it in a smaller thread too.

Sunday I started scanning some vintage Home Needlework Magazines for the tatting archive but it's very time consuming. I got 2 done on Sunday and 1 on Monday but on Monday, the pdf scan didn't transfer for some reason so that was a wasted hour. Very frustrating. I was home late today so it will be tomorrow before I can tat or scan either one. I suspect I will be mowing tomorrow night too!