Miniature clothes for Barbie

Welcome to another blog post. My last few crafting posts have shared items I made in 2022, and never got around to blogging. This year I am trying to get my blog organised, and document more of my crafting life. During 2022 I delved into more miniature knitting. I decided to make some clothes for my Neice’s Barbie dolls, as a birthday gift. I really enjoyed the process, from hunting down vintage pattern books on eBay and Etsy, locating patterns for top-down jumpers on Ravelry and making these items on my Addi crasy trio needles, and chiagoo miniature lace needles. I also got to dive into my Bendigo Wool Mills 4ply cotton stash, which I bought specifically for making dolls, toys and accessories.

A Barbie Ball dress from a vintage pattern in BWM 4ply cotton. I added some tatted snowflakes and trim. This whole piece took about 30 hours to make.

A Barbie ball dress in plain purple, BWM 4ply cotton. This piece took about 12 hours to make.

Two barbie sized jumpers, knitted top down in the round using BWM 4ply cotton. These were from a miniature jumper pattern I found on Ravelry. Each jumper took about 12 hours to make.

A barbie sized cable cardigan and hat, from a vintage knitting pattern book, made in 8ply wool with straight needles. The sleeves were set in later, and it was very fiddly to put together. This took around 15 hours to make.

The following photos are captioned to outline some of the creative processes, and problems, I encountered.

Measuring up the tatted trim as it was being made, against the base of the blue ball gown.

Connecting the tatted trim to the base of the Blue ball gown.

Miniature snowflakes to attach to the blue ball gown.

Blue ball dress with bottom lace trim complete, and the snowflakes being placed to attach.

Sewing together the cable cardigan. Definitely a labour of love. Construction of this item was very fiddly. As I am used to top-down construction, it took a few tries, some youtube tutorials and chats with my Mum and Mother in Law to figure out how to place and sew the set-in sleeves. This item made me grateful for the top-down and bottom-up construction pieces we have access to today.

Front of the cable cardigan.

The back of the cable cardigan.

Orange jumper in progress, body complete and about to move back to the sleeves.

Orange jumper. Whoops- I somehow reversed the sleeve stitches to make a purl row. a bit of tinking (Backwards knitting) was needed to go back and fix this.

The orange jumper complete. So cute!

My barbie modelling the first jumper I made, it was a little short in the sleeve, so the green jumper I made with slightly longer sleeves.

Green jumper before the sleeves were separated.

Green jumper on Miniature cable needles. This view shows the sleeve increase points by using the tiny stitch markers.

Top-down knitting in action. The green jumper with sleeves separated and body nearly complete.

I did enjoy making these items, and my niece and family were enthralled with the detail and work put into them. I learned a lot about jumper construction, which has built my confidence to get back to my own top-down knitted jumper in possum blend that I began a while ago. More about that jumper another time.

Happy crafting

Fiona T

A window project

Over our Summer holidays we enjoyed watching the new series “Wednesday”. As soon as I saw the stained glass window, I could see it as a doily and knew I had to tat it. It could also be a crocheted doily, but that is a project for another day.

I found that I had some appropriately coloured threads for this in my stash, and so I set to developing a pattern. I ended up using a lot of split rings, both single shuttle and using two shuttles. There were a couple of stumbling blocks, when things didn’t quite line up, or went a bit out of shape.

I had hoped to make a bigger doily, but with size 40 thread in the right colours (Black is Milford mercerised and the colourful one is Summer Rainbow from AlenaLea designs on Etsy) and me just wanting to get the idea down and try it, I think this has made a pretty coaster or suncatcher. I may write up a pattern, but it was reasonably fiddly to make and I’m not sure how to explain it all easily on paper (yet). The photos below show key points in my construction of this pretty window.

The first idea for the outer rings as single shuttle split rings, which didn’t work as there were joins to the main arms. I ended up winding an additional shuttle and just making normal split rings.

A close up of where I had to admit defeat, when the single shuttle split ring could not close. I realised there were too many small peices and ends to sew in. Time to cut away and start over.

Using split rings for the rainbow outside window border, much faster and neater progress here.

The window is complete here, but looks a bit wobbly. Time to block it!

Lots of pins to block this small peice. I wanted to make sure the chains curved the right way to look like a web.

The final piece looks much neater, and pretty too. This is now a coaster size, and I think it could be adapted to make a smaller pendant.

I started designing this about a month ago, and am pleased that I now have a finished peice to then tweak this pattern further. If there is enough interest, I will try and write up the pattern, too.

Until next time, happy tatting

Fiona T

Make it so! Amigurumi crochet and a few other gifts

At the end of 2022 a few of my work colleagues moved on to different schools. Some of these people had become my close friends during the last three years, and I took the time to handmade some gifts. There was also a birthday and a new baby, so lots of gifts to make.

I was particularly eager to make this amigurumi Star trek Picard for one colleague, who had many nerdy chats about Star Trek with me. I did tat a tardis for him, but then rethought it as he really loves Captain Picard, so made that instead. I enjoyed making this item, and the simplicity as it was all made in one piece. The pattern was from: https://daisyandstorm.com/2018/08/22/free-star-trek-captain-picard-amigurumi-pattern-crochet/ He really loved it!

Captain Picard Amigurumi

Captain Picard Amigurumi, made in 4 ply cotton.

I found this lovely Paton’s sierra at Unwind Craft Cafe when I went shopping with my sister-in-law. The colours are so beautiful and reminded me of the colours another colleague would often wear to work. I used a cowl pattern that Unwind had paired with this yarn, and was really happy with how this simple knit played out.

A knitted cowl made in Patons Sierra.

For my colleague who ran academic book clubs for us to stay connected during lock-down, I tatted one of my favourite bookmarks, Julie Patterson’s Petals Variation pattern. The thread is AlenAlea Design’s size 40 in summer rainbow.

OneMadTatter.wordpress.com

All of my crafting was not focused on those leaving work. I also tatted a golden dragon from Anne Bruvold’s pattern for one of my Son’s friend’s birthdays near the end of the year. This is Altin Basak size 50 thread, and the metallic thread in it usually annoyed me, so it was in a naughty drawer and only used for Angelina trimmings. However, I quite enjoyed making this little dragon, even though I had to keep a close eye on my tension so as to be able to close the rings and not break the thread.

Another dear colleague became a Grandmother near the end of the year, and so I brought in a few items I had on hand, as well as finishing off another Bakewell blanket for her to gift to her new grandchild. The blanket is made in a Schepjees whirl, Lemon cassis cream colourway, one of my favourites. Recent increases in shipping costs will likely make Scheepjes yarn difficult to source in Australia soon, so my little stash of whirls is going to be used sparingly. The other clothes and booties are assorted bamboo, cotton and acrylics, which I prefer to use for baby items as they are less likely to trigger an allergy.

A Bakewell blanket laid out, the same blanket wrapped for gifting, and assorted baby cardigans, hats and booties in a variety of yarn types.

So, that is a summary of some of the gifts I made in the last few months of 2022. Other gifts included knitting miniature doll clothes for another birthday, and I will post about that soon.

What have been your favourite items to craft and gift?

Until next time, happy crafting

Fiona T

Christmas tatting

Another project from 2022 was beginning to make some tatted baubles for a work Christmas “Kris Kringle” present. I bought these plastic baubles quite a few years ago now, and decided that it was time to make some snowflake topped baubles.

The patterns are all Alenalea Design’s, bought from her etsy shop a few years ago also. I used a Milford Mercerised cotton in size 20 to make these, as the pattern states. I also blocked the tatting onto the baubles, to help them sit well, as advised in the pattern.

The front view of the three baubles after blocking.

Top view of the three baubles.

Another angled view of the three baubles.

These took just over a week of evenings for me to complete. As they were small items, and it was summer here, I was able to block them overnight. They were fun to make and I would really like to make more this Christmas as gifts, or maybe even for my own tree.

Until next time, happy tatting

Fiona T

Variegated thread joy

It has been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened in the last 12 months in my crafting life. I’ve been delving into knitting and crocheting miniatures, doing a bit more tatting design and pattern writing alongside working full time. We have also been creating a craft room space for me to use, and I will post about that very soon. I hope to share more of these adventures with you over the next few months.

Recently I have been exploring the use of variegated threads in my tatting. I usually use them as an element alongside a solid colour. Over January, our Summer holidays, I began a doily just using variegated threads. I am enjoying working with the threads and seeing the joyful tones play against each other. The doily is the Kay monster doily, from the amazing AlenAlea designs, as are the beautiful threads. Here is an image of the first few rounds, which are in a purple and grey tone, the next rounds will be in Stormy Lavander, then through to some greens, browns and terracotta tones.

Very first rounds of the Kay Monster doily from ALenAlea Design.

Starting the Kay monster doily from AlenAlea Design. It is wavy because it needs blocking.

A big delivery of thread from AlenAlea Design, to continue my creative adventure with variegated threads.

Images showing early progress on the Kay Monster Doily.

I have also been working on my Lagniappe, designed by Mike Lyons, which I am making in a rainbow colour palette. I have moved through the red and the orange, and am now in a yellow section, and have hit a small road block in my planning of colours as I don’t think the section I have planned to be green will be visible enough. I hope to get back to it soon.

The beginnings of the Lagniappe designed by Mike Lyons pattern can be purchased through https://www.facebook.com/groups/989103871652142/

Until next time, happy tatting

Fiona T

2021- finishing off lockdown projects

It is fair to say living through a global pandemic has put us all in a bit of a spin. What were normal routines have been disrupted by lockdowns and uncertainty. I live in Melbourne, so we had extended periods of severe restrictions and lockdowns across 2020. I was relieved to be able to work from home, learning to teach my secondary students remotely. Like many of you, my crafty friends, I was also appreciative of having my crafts at hand to support my mental well being.

I was crafting regularly, but found at different times I couldn’t concentrate on some patterns. So I scaled down my expectations and used some basic patterns to make sure I could still get my crafting fix. I’ve ended up with at least one of each of a basic knitted, crochet and tatting project on the go at most times across the last year.

I have realised that I didn’t blog much at all last year. I did spend a lot of time on various projects, and photographed many of them, but just didn’t get around to the blogging part. Over the next few weeks I will share some of my projects.

Near the beginning of the year I was lucky enough to win a shuttle give away from Lorraine Kolusa for valentine’s day. It took a while for the shuttle to travel across the world, but when it arrived I was really happy to have such a lovely shuttle in my care. I had wound it thinking I would use it for Jon’s Threads that bind doily, but have ended up using it more recently for Laura’s Amanda doily.

The beautiful Valentine Shuttle

Valentine shuttle loaded and ready to tat.

Amanda Doily from Laura Bziukiewicz on Facebook. Made in size 40 thread, mauve lizbeth colour 632 and Alenalea wildflower.

I also made two lovely crocheted items with Scheepjes whirls. First a Grinda Shawl, made in a woolly whirl for my Mum.

Grinda Shawl in progress

And second a granny square baby blanket for a family friend. I was going to use the bakewell blanket pattern, but it was one that was too complicated for me during the second lockdown. Though I did manage the bakewell pattern during the first lockdown.

A successful bakewell baby blanket, in an acrylic 8ply.

I also had some knitting projects, with an “in threes” baby jacket and three knitted “can I borrow that” scarves which I made as part of a knit along through Unwind cafe.

That’s probably enough for today’s blog. I’ll upload some more projects soon.

Happy crafting,

Fiona T

Tatting Using Electron Configurations

Tatters are a creative bunch. Over the last couple of years there have been quite a few brilliant tatters designing and sharing patterns or developing interesting ways to use tatting elements and techniques. More recently there have been a number of tat alongs and new patterns shared through Facebook. It seems that when tatters around the world have some ‘free time’ they begin to ‘tat’ down those ideas that have been rattling around in their heads and share them.

I have recently begun the ‘Threads that bind’ doily, which dear Jon Youseff has shared a week at a time though facebook. I was impressed and excited when she opened up the last round of the pattern to others to design and share. There are now several versions of this last round (in some cases rounds) for tatters to drool over and then re-create themselves.

This morning I woke up to a post from Natalie Rogers on facebook where she has begun sharing her ‘tat you own adventure‘ poker cards again. If you join the Facebook page, she will draw some cards for you too. This poker card format gives you elements to play with, to design your own motifs and patterns. Last time she ran it, I managed to keep track of the elements and began drawing some possibilities. They didn’t make it to my shuttle, but it was a fun process.

My notebook with the first tat your own adventure poker draw

The most recent tat your own adventure poker draw from today. Cards drawn are sketched along the top of the page, with one possible pattern drawn out underneath.

Now, this poker game and designing phase has reminded me of an idea I had last year in November. So I thought it would be a great time to share with you all now too.

As you may be aware, I am a science teacher. Walking past a colleagues desk I saw a pile of worksheets for her Chemistry class. On top of this pile was a page listing the valence electron configurations of some elements. The notation reminded me of tatting patterns, and so the idea was born. (*Thanks to my colleague Fi1 for sharing her lesson and not thinking I was too crazy while I muttered about double stitches and picots.)

Part of the Electron configuration worksheet I noticed on a colleagues desk. It reminded me of tatting patterns.

My notebook from November 2019 with the electron configuration sheet that started my idea.

My notebook from November 2019 with the electron configuration sheet that started my idea.

Two test tats for tatting with electron configurations: Krypton motif

A close up of tatting with electron configurations: Krypton motif

More notes and thinking for tatting with electron configurations

I decided to try and make a motif of Krypton. The first step was to make a decision about the translation of the valence notation into tatting elements. I used the numbers in each orbital, along with the letter, prefix and superscript to make a pattern in tatting.

The outer orbitals I used for Krypton (Kr) were:   5s² 4d¹⁰ 5p³

I defined the letters in the orbitals as:

• s= ½ Double Stitch (Josephine knot)
• d= Double Stitch
• p = Long picot
• f= faux picot to climb out of a round
• If the orbital has a prefix, this may be used as the number of stitches of that type.
• If the orbital has a superscript, this could indicate the number of repeats, for a section or a round.

Perhaps once you choose an element, the final round is always chains showing the long picot repeat?

Of course, you could change any of these elements to suit your ideas and style of tatting.

To make my Krypton motif I found the final sequence to work:

• 1st round: Rings of 5 Josephine knots, and 2 small picots, chains of 4 p 4 p 4.                5 repeats for the round.
• 2nd round: Chain of 5 picots, join to previous round’s chain at picot. Repeat.

A close up of tatting with electron configurations: Krypton motif

Of course, this is just the valence electrons (electrons in the outer shell) of Krypton. If you wanted to include all of electrons and orbitals for this, the 36th element, you would make a doily instead of a motif.

This lead to me thinking about a “First 20 elements Doily”, where the rounds would be built up of each element’s electron configuration.

More notes and thinking for tatting with electron configurations

The only problem I can see is in the execution of this idea.  When an “s= Josephine knot” Hydrogen and Helium are very tiny and fiddly to make. So maybe, for this experiment, we would need to redefine “s” as a double stitch, and “d” as 2 double stitches, or even a padded double stitch.

The first two rounds of this doily could then be represented as:

• 1st round: (H) 1s [ Ring 1ds p 1ds p 1ds], Chain (He) 1s² [1ds p 1ds]
• 2nd round: (Li) 2s [Ring 2ds p 2ds p 2 ds],  Chain (Be) 2s² [2ds p 2ds]

I haven’t tested this yet. I would be interested to know what you all think.

I have been having fun looking up other elements and their valence electron configurations. Here is a link to a table with the electron configuration of every element: https://biochemhelp.com/chemistry/electron-configuration-of-every-element-2/

If you wanted to make a Krypton doily you could base it off this:

36

Kr

Krypton

1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p6

Well, I hope that has given you some ideas to work with, and maybe you’ll try and define your own tatting elements from the electron configurations. I would love to see and hear about your own tatting adventure with the periodic table and valence electrons 🙂

As always,

Happy tatting!

Fiona T

Tatting along-Serwetka Arleta

At the moment I am tatting a sweet little pattern from Laura Bziukiewicz which she has shared through a facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/983262432055451/?active_tab=discussion

You will need to join the facebook event and message Laura for the pattern if you would like to tat along too.

It is a nice pattern for a beginner, and I have levelled it up a little by using split chains to climb out of rows. I am working on round four now, and it is coming along nicely.

Round one of the Arleta tatted doily, in size 20 Gorgeous Alenalea thread.

Round two of Round one of the Arleta tatted doily, in size 20 Gorgeous Alenalea thread.

Round three Round one of the Arleta tatted doily, in size 20 Gorgeous Alenalea thread.

Laura has also released a few patterns on her facebook page, all of them look lovely. I hope to finish this one soon so I can try another that has caught my eye. Thank you Laura for sharing your talents with all of us!

Until next time, happy tatting

Fiona T

Happy New Year 2020- review of 2019 tatting

Happy New Year! I thought I would spend a few minutes uploading some images to review my craft adventures during 2019. I really didn’t think I had done too much crafting, as I was teaching, finishing my PhD thesis, spending time with family and friends and we also got a puppy. It seems I managed to squeeze in a fair bit of crafting though! The photos below show a wide range of fibre crafts I have begun, and many I have completed. In looking through these images, there are a couple of projects I had forgotten about too…like the Mary Konior Spinning Glass mats experiments, and a monthly bookmark challenge I set myself. I am pleased that I have been able to blog semi-regularly and managed to have a giveaway too. I hope 2020 will see regular posts, and that I can share more of my creative ideas with you all too.

Climbing vines for 2019 Yarn bombing with Yarn Corner

A range of posts yarn bombed with yarn corner

A doily edging from a Russian pattern, finished in 2019

Climbing vine installed

Oval Doily in Ecru (Linda Davies) about to be made in Fuchsia thread by Onemadtatter

Woman standing outside a factory sales shop front with two bags

Practice of short row wrapping technique for Purl Soho baby blanket

Julie Patterson’s Flower cross, tatted in 40 white mercerised cotton for a friend’s wedding

A chemistry experiment- Kr

AlenAlea’s Monthly bookmark pattern

A lovely handmade gift from a beautiful student

Crocheted squares for a charity blanket from school.

Red and Green crocheted cristmas lights for 2019 Christmas Yarn Corner installation

AlenaLea Design monthly tatting pattern

The beginning of Rozetta

Colourful crocheted Christmas Lights

Hedwig- From a wonderful friend on submission of my PhD.

Lady Kina in Bendigo Wool Mill’s Bloom Butterfly.

Crochet for a baby blanket

Beginning of a crochet dress for my niece

AlenLea design monthly pattern and thread

AlenaLea Design Monthly thread and pattern

Crochet square for a Yarn Corner Care Blanket

One of my favourite bookmarks from Julie Patterson made in AlenaLea Thread

Beautiful wool from Bendigo Wool Mills to make clothes and baby blankets

Our display table at the Nana’s handmade market…many of these are my personal collection and not for sale.

I hope your year has been filled with great things, including crafty fun. I also want to wish you all the best for 2020. Many thanks for following, as always happy crafting,

Fiona T

The last Tat it and See from Jane

Well, I tried to make it last as long as I could, but I finished off the tat it and see (TIAS) this weekend. The cute little mermaid is finished. A huge thanks to Jane Eborall for once again planning, designing, diagramming and hosting this fun little project.  Here is a picture of my little mermaid, with her flowing green hair.

The images below shoe the progression of the project since January, when the pattern was released in small parts over on the TIAS blog. The guessing game that runs along side the pattern release is also fun to follow, with some creative tatters making images and poems to share their ideas too.

Did you take part in the TIAS this year? Feel free to link to your own blog in the comments to share your experiences too.

Until next time,

Happy tatting

Fiona T