Out of my "old jewelry" stash, I pulled out these earrings last night and decided to take them apart. They had the old screw on back from the 50's or so. The shells and beads are wired on. The scan shows the yellow from the glue more than it shows up when you look at them in person. The shells are plastic - not the real shell I was hoping for but usable, nonetheless.








The shells are pearlized and pretty as they are but the ones that still have glue on them could be covered with enamel polish. I don't know how I will use them yet. I have tons of pieces to take apart and once I do, then the potential of what they will newly become will speak to me. I remind myself sometimes that I don't HAVE to tat around everything!






In my quest to find a baby bonnet pattern or something I could adapt for use,I was looking at my Lacis German edition of Emmy Liebert's work. Scroll waaaaay down on the website to find it.

I have a translation of terms but it's still time-consuming to figure out the patterns. This motif was big enough I could count the stitches and then check back in the written text to see if I was right. Each round was cut & tie, of course. I used a mock picot then split ring in the center to climb out to the next row, a split chain to climb out of that one to the clovers, and then the 1st clover was a center split ring, 1 whole ring on the side and then a split ring to the other side and I used side split rings all the way around, splitting the last one where the final round attached to a ring - so I ended up doing the whole motif without a single cut and tie until I was finished.

That was my test sample in size 30 Cebelia but it sure felt like 20 or even 10 after tatting with size 50 cordonnet. So then I tatted the size 50 motif and this time, the cordonnet behaved much much better. Is it me or the pattern? I'm using this to look the same as another bonnet back in a different book - but I don't like the motifs in that one. And I realized AFTER I was already tatting the small motifs that the one I was originally looking at only had 9 small motifs, not 10, so I'm not sure how this will go. I don't think it will be a problem. The next round goes completely around, connecting everything together again. The size looks good so far. I had 10 pairs of ends to hide afterwards, which I didn't like but there really was no way to climb from one motif to another without changing the motif substantially and I didn't want to do that. It really wasn't that bad once I got started though. I had done 4 the night before so I only had 6 left last night. The ends hid nicely and I was pleased with that. I was afraid they would distort the motif and appear a little lumpy. This scan is before I finished the ends off last night. So now I have a row around which has lots of little rings full of picots and the chains will connect to this part. After that, I think they are all rows for the sides and top. I'll have to read it a little more closely. I tatted a test repeat for the next row last night but then had to call it a night so I could get up to come to work today!