2 little ducks went out to play

 

It has been a while since I showed some embroidery.  I pulled this out of the box  a few weeks ago and started to embroider it.

If you remember a while back I made this and added the handmade tatting to it that I had done.  But I had wanted to embroider on it.  My oldest daughter who did this wanted to help so we each did a little. Her stitches are getting real good almost can not tell whose stitches are whose I still can but not for long. She did all the flowers and the feet and beaks.I am sending this post to my little brother today so that he will have it for his new little baby girl that will arrive soon.  Along with a few baby bonnets and such too.  Some day I need to start teaching them to sew clothes.  It would be a good thing but I always figured if I show them everything else sewing clothes is easy the patterns tell you what to do but i should teach them.

Added lace to gingham dress

For got to take a picture of the lace before I added it to the dress but I found this old picture that has two of the laces in it the antique ones.
In this below photo the top most right cream Irish crochet lace is on the collar and on the far left right below the white lace with the turquoise edging is the one I used for the m hem.  This photo was taken back in 2008.  

Above that is my handmade lace box where I place laces I make and laces I buy that are handmade for future use.  Some of these I still have as lace and some have been all used up.. This is a 12 gallon tote so it holds a lot of lace it is about half full at the moment  Some of the lace in this box my children have made as well as they were learning how to crochet, tat, or knit.  Some new I made some antique given to me pretty much everything has a history I and I know them all  The little tags (embroidery thread bobbins) you see attached to things is how I remember things like that on special ones.  Like the ones I used in this dress they had tags on them for years so I would not just use them up because they were special and given to me out of love from my grandmother and one of her best friends.  They had been in the friends family for years so I was honored when she let them leave her family line and was passed to mine.

Bag of Lace

Here are the other pieces of lace that had been in the bag that I bought for 2.99.  I think it was a great find.  Just sad that someone didn't like their work enough to keep it.

This green one isn't too interesting to me but I will figure something out for it.  Maybe take it down to the center section by removing all the chains and make a bun cover for my girls.  That would make it at least useful again to someone.
The pink one I want to copy the pattern the tatted piece in this photo may end up becoming the edge of set of wrist warmers to make lace that hangs over the hands.  If you want to see these photos better click on them and it will take you to a bigger photo on flickr.

The top piece that is cut off matches the thread used in the last tatted photo above and at the bottom of this photo so might figure out a way to add them to one another.  The top pink one is crocheted in the round and has some slight damage so not sure if I am going to fix it and make it into something else or just copy the pattern.  The next pink one I know I want to make more of it so I will be coping that pattern I think it is so pretty.


The tatted medallions in this next photo are just tied together with a separate piece of string so I am thinking I will separate them and figure out what to do with them at that  point.  They are made out of a pearl cotton.  You can see I have already separated one in the very top photo of this post.

Nice white tatted edging haven't a clue what to do with it at the moment it will just go into my lace box for future use.

Tatted Capelet

I found this large bag of lace scraps at a thrift store the entire bag cost less than $2.99 and had at least 5 such pieces in it plus a lot of crochet too. There are several usable pieces of crochet and tatted lace in the bag I just have to figure out what to use them for. The first piece I decide I would use was this piece of tatted lace made out of pearl cotton. It was already connected into a continuous piece. So I decided I would make it into another capelet.

The pieces of tatting are so large they make a strong focal point.  It was very simple to do put a shell edging around the already tatted pieces which added strength to them. Since the tatter is unknown I was not sure how strong the person was in their skills of finishing work. Upon inspection on the piece, the creator only tied knots at the end of their work and didn't weave the ends in so it is a fragile piece and will have to be washed by hand.   I rarely find tatted pieces that have the ends finished in a good way.  Yet it would be sad to toss that much work and not enjoy it.  Which means it would have to be made into an item that could easily be hand washed and not something that would get a lot of wear and tear. So after I had added the shells I started into the mesh area working with different techniques to get the valleys between the motifs to the same high so I could then just work up the piece simply with rounds of chains that get less and less number of chains near the top.  At the necks edge I once again lengthened the chains to give ease in the drape and finished it of with a picot edge took less than a day to do this transformation.  Those that know me know I do not usually wear pink.  But every now and again it is nice, would have been good at Valentines but I didn't have the scrap of tatting then.  Since the pink pearl cotton I used was also found junking(thrifting) a long time ago.  I have made a pair of gloves already with this thread.  So the few dollars I spent on that cone has gone a long way.  The whole item cost me less than $2.00 probably not even $1.00.  Not bad!

Crochet Oya lace book in English

I have been looking for a while for an Oya lace book in English.  I have found one and it is available on Amazon for an inexpensive price compared to the ones from Turkey.  This book has the crochet version of Oya not the needle version.  It also includes 2 samples of tatted versions (on page 54 and the same photo is on the cover) in the photos but there are not any tatting patterns in the book.  If you already know how to tat you could make them from the photos.
The Beaded edge (inspired designs for crocheted edgings and trims)
Midori Nishida/CRK Design
88 page book
isbn 978-1-59668-300-6

HS101: tatted lace to fabric

This type is done almost exactly the same as french lace to fabric.

Use DMC heirloom sewing machine thread when doing this for real and needle size#60, #65 or #70.


For the sample I will just be using normal sewing thread so you can see it easy in the photos and it will be a contrasting color for the same reason.


prep work


1. Cut 1 piece of lace and one piece of fabric the same length
2. Prep by starching and pressing both (using clean iron, and clean board, also use spray starch)  ( if the tatting is homemade out of tatting cord it may not need starting but always better to starch than not to)  this technique only works with store bought lace or homemade lace that has a crochet chain added to the header edge.  The header edge is the edge attached to the fabric.

How to


W=3.0-4.0

L = 0.5

• place right sides together with the lace being 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch away from the edge of the fabric  (this  piece of lace is handmade by me in size 30 thread then I added a size 80 crochet edge in similar color so I could use a sewing machine to attach it)
•  placement
• 
• using zig zag stitch stitch over the edge of the fabric and the edge of the lace" the chain stitch".
•  sew zig zag satin stich
• 
• press towards fabric
• wrong side before pressing
• 
• right side
• 

using correct thread this is what your finished piece should look like

right side finished
 
right side finished

Items for new niece

I have been making things for a new niece that was born just a few days ago.  I will put these in the mail today.  Sorry this is why the delay on the tutorials on heirloom sewing.  She is the 20th of my nieces and nephews but the first baby born from my siblings.  This doll has no shoulders it will look better on a real baby.  this doll is size newborn- 3 months that is why the rush to get them to her or she will out grow this dress.

onsies with added embelisments

There are actually two sets of booties in the package but the others are store bought silk ones and I didn't do any thing to them so I am not posting them.

Baby bonnet  was was going to make a pink one too but I think best to get this in the mail before she out grows the items.  She already has one bonnet by me that she was given long before her birth.

My oldest daughter crocheted around the burp cloths the rest I made.

Lace Sampler Book

If you are curious as to why you have not seen much of my own work recently. Two weeks ago I was making another  sampler book  but for lace this time. I was using grommets on it and well I hit my left hand index finger with a hammer. I have not done to much handwork as of late because of it.  I was making a sample book with different pages for tatted, crochet, knitted, hairpin lace, some unknown makers some mine and some great grandparents each page is labeled so my kids will know who made the lace on that page.  I will add pages to it latter to add my childrens' lace samples, and needle lace samples and tennerife samples and so on.

That is why the grommets so I can easily change things around.  The pages are 18 x 11 with 8 grommets at the top of each page so that I can use rings to hold them together which also makes it easy to add pages that is as long as I don't take a hammer to my hand.  The pages are made out of wool.  The wool was washed so it is felted which is a good thing because I do not have to hem the edges at all  because the wool is clean I shouldn't have to worry about wool moths either but I will still take precautions on it any way. right now these are in one book but in time they will be split into other books such as.

• crochet by unknown crocheters
• crochet by me
• crochet by my children one for each of them
• crochet by great grandmothers
• tatting by me
• tatting by unknown tatters
• tatting by my children
• knitted lace by me
• knitted lace by others
• bobbin lace by me
• tennerife lace by me
• tennerife lace by others
• etc the list goes on and on

 

As you can see this is why I made the book changeable not all of these categories will have there own book but they will have there own pages and if there are to many of one it will get its own book like crochet by unknown crocheters already needs its own book.  I tend to buy little balls of vintage to antique thread when ever I see them they also tend to have little scraps of other peoples unfinished work in them.

I still need to make covers for these and I still need to sew lots in place as you can tell somethings are safety pined in so I know where they go.  This way I can carry a page with me and work on sewing it in and not get poked by straight pins holing them in place.  But i have not sewn in much yet the hand thing.  I am able to do sewing again now as my hand is mostly recovered but I am trying to empty a pod unit that has been in my driveway for a year and I need to get to it because most of my fabric is in it and well I am worried it is getting wrecked.

There are more pages in this book some with more lace samples some blank  but this gives you an idea of it all.

So for those who don't make test swatches a lot of mine in this book are my test swatches they are important. A lot are also my swatches from doing repair work trying to get the gauge right and trying to figure out the pattern. Samples are important. As I am working on cleaning out our pod unit I am finding more and more of my samples that have just been scattered about in my sewing supplies. It will now be nice to have a record to show people what I can do.

Daughter's tatting

My oldest daughter (12 yrs old) over the 4th of July weekend decided she wanted to pick up tatting.  So I sat down to teach her.  Not an easy feet since I smashed my left hand with a hammer last week making a sampler book (more about that at a later date).  I tried and she succeeded at it. So this is her second piece of tatting the first one she accidentally left at grandma's on the 3rd when we all celebrated the 4th of July.  I know sounds odd the 3rd is not the 4th but the 4th was Sunday and we don't do things like that on Sunday even our Easter egg hunts happen on Saturdays.  She was not half bad for a beginner give her time and she will do great.  I told her she had to make this until she runs out of this thread I always do that to them.  By the time they finish with 1 or 2 balls of thread they are usually pretty good at what ever skill is involved.

Part 6b:1940s babyreproduction yellow accents

I thought I had taken pictures of this before I added the lace trim but I can not find them now.  Oh well!  Here is what my repo of the last slip looks like.  Like I said earlier it was too simple for me so I added some yellow tatting that I made years ago to the item to make it a little fancier I may still add some embroidery to it.  All of the items are to fit a baby about 1 year old for some reason this pattern/ slip was designed to fit a newborn so it is much smaller than the other ones.

Pattern of tatting is in the original post of when I was making this tatting.  I added tatting to the neck area, arm holes and hem of the slip.  I used cotton batiste for this again.  All these dresses and slips have french seams.