Covered in Snowflakes

For the past six months, I've been working on creating snowflake designs. Although designing typically involves many iterations of the same pattern, I didn't realize just how many snowflakes I had made until I looked through my design binder. I placed the snowflakes on top of the dresser for a picture:

Some of the designs were scrapped or revised until I came up with a version that I liked. In total, 14 made it to the final stage. It's taking me longer than expected to finalize the document because we are very busy getting ready to move into a townhouse. Nonetheless, I hope to finish up my edits and have the patterns ready to send out to test tatters soon.

A quarter of the way

I'm now a quarter of the way through the large onion ring magic square. Here's what it looks like:

This pattern is completed in one pass, and for those interested in following along, I've made a rough guide. I have numbered each onion ring and placed arrows between them to show the order of operations. The numbers are a bit hard to see, but I'm hoping that opening the image in a new tab will make them readable:

The triangular section above represents one pattern repeat. Complete four repeats to form a large magic square. The two small rings immediately after onion ring #43 are the beginning of the second repeat. Here is another photo, without numbers, for comparison:

In size 40 thread, the completed square should measure 13 inches by 13 inches. It will be several more months before I can finish the square, and I will keep my blog updated as I make progress.

Anna's Magic Square

Anna reached out to me on my blog yesterday, asking if she could share a photo of her progress with the onion ring magic square. Well, I just received her photo via email, and all I can say is wow!

She has connected six of the large magic squares to create the mat pictured above. I will have to ask what she is planning to make, maybe a tablecloth?

I'm always amazed when I see really large tatting projects, as I can never seem to find the patience to stick with one for very long. I'm glad that there are people who do have that patience, so I can admire their work :)

For those interested in this pattern, just a reminder that it is free and you can find it on my free patterns page, or by clicking here to go to the pattern directly. I have gotten about 1/4 of the way through my magic square project, and will post about that in a few days along with a hand drawn tatting path for those who would like to follow along.