Motif 8: Onion doily

Those onion rings are still occupying space in my head, so I made this little onion ring doily.

This is the 'Green Vedallia' doily from Roger AKA Freedman's needle tatting site.  My version should be called 'Yellow onions and shallots'.

I have great memories of the needle tatting boards.  I learned to tat in my teens, but I had trouble getting past simple one ring edgings.  The problem was those old line by line patterns.  I didn't know it then, but I' miserable without a diagram.  I slogged at it though, because I really liked the look of the lace.

Then in my twenties, I found the needle tatting boards.  There were many lovely intermediate patterns that I wanted to try.  The things is, I don't needle tat so half the instructions sounded like gobbledygook.  The instructions didn't make sense, but Roger AKA Freedman has some of clearest pictures I'd ever seen.

It finally hit me that I didn't need the words.  I just needed the pictures and the stitch counts and I could figure it out myself.  It was a eureka moment for me and I've been a happy tatter ever since.

Motif 7: Clever onion rings

Today's motif is a little onion ring butterfly from Tatted Butterflies by Adelheid Dangela.  I haven't done a lot of onion rings, so I googled and found some lovely tutorials from Jane Eborall and Georgia Seitz.  The onion rings are worked as concentric rings, with a single shuttle.  I thought, "Oh, that's clever.  Let's try it!".

It turns out I was being too clever.  My onion rings didn't look like the picture.  The stitch count was off and the rings wouldn't lie flat.

The pattern clearly states "Work using 2 shuttles".  Onion rings with two shuttles are done by working the center round as a normal ring and the outside rounds as a series of chains.

Here's the final butterfly, with two shuttle onion rings.  I think it looks better.  It certainly lies flatter.  So, perhaps the moral of the story is: It's more important to read the instructions than to use clever techniques :)