Like Puzzle Pieces

I'm not sure if I've ever written about designing being like placing pieces of a puzzle. It's something I think about often, especially when working with elements that don't quite fit into place. I've found that it's extremely helpful to make little bits of tatting to overlay on the offending part of the design. Like pieces of a puzzle, you can visualize what fits and what doesn't.

I decided to try something new with my last piece of tatting and truly work it backwards. I had been having trouble fitting a center into a pre-determined outer round and wanted to see if this would help.

I began by tatting a ring of 12 flowers, followed by one central flower:

I don't actually have photos of the next part, but I placed bits and pieces of tatting into the open space to see what would fit. After I had an idea of something that would work, I began filling in the blank area with tatting:

Surprisingly, it was very easy to tat this way. I thought that it would be awkward to work in a confined space, but it went very smoothly! I will definitely use this method in the future.

After I finished up my sample, I realized that I might also be able to use the center from my previous post, with altered stitch counts. I tatted a new center and placed it on top of the light blue doily to see if it would work:

As you can see, the picots on the white chains match up with the flowers in the final round. Many hours later, I ended up with a few small doilies:

These ended up very similar to the small doily in my previous post, as I wanted to keep the same idea and not "lose" that pattern. However, I received a lot of great suggestions on that post, which I've been keeping in mind for future adaptations of this pattern.

Speaking of puzzles, I've also been working on Jane's TIAS. The consensus is that this will be a frog, but I'm still not sure how three beads will be worked into that. I'm anxious to see how it turns out!

Mirror, Mirror

I tried to come up with a simple pattern to use for a design tutorial, and this is what happened:

Nonetheless, it does illustrate a good design tool. Mirrors can be used to simulate what a design will look like, especially when working with uneven draft material:

I should still be able to use the inner two rounds to show how to draw and take measurements on the iPad, and the outer two rounds as an example of how a design can be expanded upon. I call them rounds, though it can all be done with one continuous piece of thread. I absolutely hate cutting and tying!