Tatting!

Some things I have tatted and are tatting!

Tatting & Crochet

Now that my Great Aunt Doodle has taught me how to make Porcelain dolls she is teaching me to tat.  I must say tatting is the hardest handwork I have ever learned!  I sat there for nearly 3 hours watching her and doing exactly what she was doing and still I could not get my stitches to work right.  If you know anything about tatting you will know that your stitches are suppose to be on the bobbin thread and not the ring thread.  Of course mine were coming out on the ring thread and therefore I could not draw up the thread to close the circle.  I finally got out my camera and recorded her doing it so when I got home I could put it on my computer and study it.  After a zillion tries and lots of cutting thread and starting over I finally got it!  At first I would get a stitch to land on the bobbin thread and did not know how I did it.  And then couldn't get it to do it again for the next few tries.  Finally after sitting there and watching this you-tube video over and over where this lady kept saying you had to pull the bobbin thread tight I figured it out!  I was so excited!  Now I get my stitches to land right every time.  I am just having trouble getting my picots to come out uniform.  But with practice I will get that right too!

Here is a picture of my tatting.  It's not great, but it is getting there!

I have also been working on some more crocheted rings.  I love crocheting these little roses out of size 20 thread and making them into rings to wear.  I love wearing them and have been making some to sell too.

I don't know if any of you saw the watch band I crocheted for my watch several posts back or not.  It was a beautiful band.  The problem with having a crocheted watch band that you wear all the time is it gets extremely dirty after a time.  So I cut that band off my watch and am now working on a new one.  I am not finished with it by a long shot, but decided to post pictures of it in process.

I will be putting some crocheted flowers on it.  I love crocheted flowers!

Porcelain Dolls & Family

In an earlier post I talked about the porcelain dolls I was making at my Great Aunt Doodle's house.  I finally finished all my dolls!  I have five of them in all. 

To the left is my doll Victoria Rose.  She is the one with the beautiful brown ringlets.  She is a sit down doll. 

Leaning against Victoria Rose is Elsbeth.  





This is the back of Victoria Roses' head.  Isn't her hair beautiful?  I just love it!

Here is close up of Victoria Rose's face.

Here is Elsbeth's close ups!

My Aunt let me copy patterns to make Elsbeth and Victoria Rose dresses.  I am going to start on those soon!

These three are My Princess and My Little Princess'.  Aren't the bodies weird on the little dolls?  They seem too big to me, but they are the patterns my Aunt gave me.  Once I get their gowns made and get them dressed they will look fine.

Close ups of My Little Princess'.  I think I did better painting the sleeping eyes then the awake eyes!  Please remember that this was my first time painting dolls!  I don't usually paint anything!  The enlargement of the picture makes them look worse then they really do.  I love all my dolls!  It was so much fun making them!                       

I crocheted an outfit for My Princess and here she is in it!

We have such a hard time getting together to take family pictures.  We finally got a few made the other day, but without my oldest daughter as she was at work!  Ugh!  Maybe one day I will be able to get a picture of the five of us!
This is my husband, Clark, my daughter, Tara, and me:

This is my son, Keith, Tara, and me:

Here is Keith and Tara.  I think this is such a sweet picture! 

And here is a picture of my Daddy and me:

School has started here and here is a picture of Keith on his first day of 11th grade.  It is so hard to believe that my baby is now a Junior in high school!  He wasn't excited about having his picture taken, but I have taken pictures of my kids on the first day of school their whole lives.  I told him he only has one more year and then there will be no more pictures on the first day of school.  How sad :(

Little Baby Doll

When I was a little girl my Daddy traveled a lot on business.  He would always bring us kids back a surprise.  One time he brought me this little doll.  I was about 6 or 7 at the time.  I don't know what happened to her original clothes.  I saw on the back of her head it says 1963 so I guess she was manufactured that year.  I just loved this doll.  The poor thing has some hair missing and what hair she does have is very brittle and looks terrible.  I imagine that is from when I used to play with her in the bathtub.  Maybe one day I can get her some new hair.  The blue outfit she has on in the first pictures is one I crocheted for her when I was in my teens.  I used worsted weight yarn to make it.  She did have booties on, but I seemed to have lost them.  I came across her recently in a box in my closet.  I decided it was time to make her a new outfit.

Here is the new clothes I just finished crocheting her!  I crocheted them out of size 10 crochet thread.  I think she looks so beautiful!  I made her hat so that it would come down over all her hair and the holes where her hair is missing.

My daughter said you could really tell that my crocheting had improved over the years!  The first outfit is done in all plain double crochets.  Whereas the new outfit has more design to it and different stitches.  I guess maybe she is right.  It has been so much fun making this outfit for my baby doll!

Lace is on Etsy!

I finally got my lace all listed in my Etsy store!  Check it out to purchase any you would like to have!

Problems with ETSY!

I have decided that I need to clean out some of my craft and sewing stuff.  Today I took a lot of my lace and measured the different pieces and put labels on them as to the yardage, then took pictures so I could put them in my ETSY store.  I always forget that the megapixels of pictures to put on etsy have to be lower as you can not put a big picture on there.  So I took all these pictures then tried to upload them to etsy and they would not load!  They were too big!  Ugh!  So I went to resize them on my camera and redownload them onto the computer, only to discover my batteries had gone dead in my camera!  So now I have to wait till I get home to resize them.  I decided I would just put them on here for now.

 This package of lace has approximately 22 yards of lace and will sell for $7.00 plus shipping.

This package of lace has approximately 8 yards of lace and will sell for $5.00 plus shipping.

This package of lace has approximately 15 yards of lace and will sell for $5.00 plus shipping.

This package of lace has approximately 29 yards of lace and will sell for $8.00 plus shipping.

This package of lace has approximately 22 yards of lace and will sell for $7.00 plus shipping.

And lastly I have a package of eyelet with approximately 17 yards of eyelet that will sell for $5.00 plus shipping.

I hope to get these on my ETSY tonight or tomorrow.  If anyone is interested in purchasing them just let me know.

Crocheted Coasters

Is this not the cutest coaster?!  I finished it last night.  I found the coaster on Pink Rose Crochet's blog.  She had not really given any directions for it so I had to just look at the picture to figure it out.  Mine may not be exactly like hers.  But that is good.  I just made it to put on my dresser or something at home.  I just love the colors in it.  I used Lizbeth Cordonnet 100% Egyptian Cotton Thread to do the outside flowers in.  The color is called Tropical Punch.  I just love this thread.  It is a little more expensive then some thread, but worth it.  The thread I used is size 10.  I have also gotten lots of this thread in size 20 and that is what I use to make the rings I have talked about in the previous post.  There are so many beautiful colors of this thread that it is hard to chose which ones to buy!  I hope to eventually own them all!  Just have to get a few at a time!