Monday, March 12, 2012

Firus Fun!

I really love Jon's Firus from Elegant Tatting Gems. It's really beautiful.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to load my shuttle with enough thread to make it through.  It's actually a funny thought.  I used to just fill the shuttles up with fear of running out.  Now, I don't want to waste any thread, but I still don't always feel like loading the shuttle back and adding thread. 
Jon's Firus Size 40 Tat-ilicious "Chilled"

But, since I got so close to finishing, I just left off the last flower.  I plan to tat a pink flower and stick it on there.
[    Looking at it now though, I think it may need some blocking. :o/    ]

AND that got me to wanting to make this navy blue one:


This one was a real pain in the brain.  I flat out forgot one ring, so I made up for it by doing a SCMR with a ring on top of it.  Then I left out two rings.....  That's what I refer to as a "Palm to forehead moment"
So the "extra" threads in the picture are from the two rings that I had to insert after the fact.

Also, you see that especially hideous chain on the left?  I ran out of thread on one shuttle but was determined
to finish the chain by tatting over with the shuttle that still had thread on it.  That of course meant my regular tension was out the window, which is why I'm left with this.

I'm *hoping* that once I add the flowers it'll work out (and I plan on them being all different colors)

I am making good progress on my Dahlia doily.  Only 4 more outer flowers to go!



4 comments:

  1. Beautiful thread color. Lady Shuttlemaker has a tutorial on estimating thread usage. She gives clear instructions and it works. Taking a little time to do the math saves lots of time later for me. Hope it helps you. Karen in OR

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  2. Really like the one in Chilled! It looks great! :)
    Can't see the next one finished! :)

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  3. Jane Eborall has a great tutorial on adding in thread without knots that makes the process so much less painful. And Jon has a post on her blog that describes how to plan the amount of thread you need to load on your shuttle. I use this method ALOT! Now I never have trouble finding an empty shuttle when I want to start a new project. If you would like me to post links, just drop me a note at my blog and I'll post them for you.

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  4. Thank y'all for the list of tutorial.
    I think I have seen at least one of those before, but I can't remember where I saw it.
    I guess I really should start to try those things since I've been using my HDT more and more.
    One thing I really love about variegated thread, is that you can count the number of yards by how many runs through the colorway you have wrapped. :o)
    That probably doesn't work for all variegateds but it does for mine since I do mine in a 39" loop (most of them anyways)

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