A Bit of Magic Came in the Mail Today.....

Isn't it pretty?

It's the Friendship Inspired Crazy Quilt Block.

It came in the mail today from Melissa over at HoneyBeesBliss.

Let me take you on a little tour of this beautifully

stitched square of pure magic

.

Look at the beautiful detail;

.

the lovely tatting with beads stitched inside of

the rings of the Hens and Chicks edging

that Melissa tatted herself.

and the beautiful Silk Ribbon Embroidery stitched on the

cloverleaves of vintage tatted lace.

The crystal teardrop beads hang sweetly nestled

twixt the hanging flowerbells with peals of pearl.

The simple row of tatted lace

from a vintage hankie she acquired from somehwere.

The simple, yet very sweet, touch of handmade lace lends

an unknown story of whence it came.

The pearly heart...a sweet symbol of friendship

floats atop a soft sea of velveteen.

Let me take you to the "heart" of the square

lest we forget our angel in the center, because,

after all,

tatting is The Lace of Angels !

The glass beads stitched so sweetly atop the

silk ribbon roses embroidered on the

beaded lace swag

Can you see them?

.

A lacy flower peeks out

'neath golden threads of beaded stitching

.

Golden flowers with glass pearls afloat

in a sea of pearls, tiny silk roses, and vintage wedding lace.

And last, but not least,

Melissa's signature,

The Honey Bee...

Melissa means "Honey Bee"

A printed label marks the occasion of a
Friendship Inspired Exchange

of handmade goodies

accompanied by an uplifting card

with sweet sentiments of

a friendship inside

.

Thank You, Melissa!

I couldn't be happier.

I hope you get your package soon.

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, this concludes our tour of the Friendship Inspired CQ Square handmade by Melissa. I hope you enjoyed your stay and comments can be left in the comment box....

.....as always thank you for visiting. Stop in again, soon.

Start of A Doily

As I mentioned in an earlier post I am involved in a Pretty Doily Tat-A-Long initiated by Melissa of HoneyBeesBliss and myself over at eTatters. Melissa has been great about starting, but I got caught up in a few other projects here and there. So today, being a holiday here in the good ol' US of A (Happy Memorial Day, everyone) I had time to get started on it.

This is just the center and when it's done it will look something like this. Isn't that pretty? That's a slight variation of the pattern we are doing which you can find here. The thread I am using is DMC Cordonnet Special size 60 in white. I really like the sturdiness and smoothness of the thread. I find I have an easy time closing the rings despite it's smaller size. By the way, it's an open invitation so anyone is welcome to join in the tat-a-long and eTatters is free to join.

This will be counted as one of my motifs for the 25MotifChallenge once the entire doily is tatted.

Melissa is tatting this as her first doily...I am tatting this as a distraction to keep me occupied until this little beauty arrives from Melissa. I can hardly stand the anticipation! I'm so excited!!! Good thing there is this doily to tat to help me from exploding from the exciting anticipation. Oh, did I mention I was excited? I wasn't quite sure if I made that clear...LOL!

Thank you for visiting. Feel free to leave a comment and know that all of your comments are read and appreciated. I love blogging and it's because of all the reader comments that make it so much fun, thank you, readers and your comments!! That means YOU!!!

Peace out,

TattingChic

Friendship Exchange

Every once in a while a wonderful thing happens in someone's life....like right now I am lucky lucky LUCKY!!!! Have you checked out Melissa's blog lately? It's awash with the most beautiful Crazy Quilt Square right now and it's MINE all MINE....BWAH hA hA hA hA....Okay I am trying to contain myself but I am going crazy with how beautiful it is. I know other people are so tactful and eloquent when they talk about exchanges but I can't help it....lucky lucky me!!! Thank you Melissa!!! I'm so HAPPY!!!!

Oh, SO back to reality....you'll notice that the title says "Friendship EXCHANGE" which would connote that Melissa is getting something in return... and she is... but I have to tell you a little something I think I'm getting the better end of the deal as Melissa is an extremely talented needle artiste.Anyway, it all started with a conversation about an ice cream cone here.



So, Melissa wanted a little pink ice cream cone for a little girl named Bekah for her CQ squares and she said she'd make a CQ square in return and to make the time invested more equal I said I'd tat something more because it only takes a couple of hours for me to make that ice cream cone.


I know...I know....you don't want stories....you want TATTING... you want PICTURES of Tatting... you want EYE CANDY... so here it is.





Here's Bekah's ice cream cone.

Melissa wanted a pink one for her. So pink she got. Pink is my favorite color anyway so I really enjoyed tatting it up. It's made with DMC Cebelia both the solid pink and brown are size 20.

So to make the crafting time even I made Melissa an offwhite bookmark out of Mary Konior's black magic pattern from her "Tatting With Visual Patterns" book. I LOVE that book and I LOVE that pattern and I think this pattern looks so classy in offwhite...it's a little lighter than ecru and definately not white. So, I present to you

Motif #4 Melissa's Friendship Bookmark

I hope you like it Melissa. It's to go with her bible that she's making a beautiful red bible hand bag~cover for have you seen it? Here's some of it. It's still in progress and it is just beautiful so far, so I'm hoping this will make a nice addition as a bookmark.The bookmark is made with Coats & Clarks size 70 thread color #61.

Now, we cannot forget the 25 Motif Challenge. I'm counting this bookmark as MOTIF # 4 just in case it wasn't obvious from the super huge font I used just above it.

As always, Happy Tatting everyone and thank you for stopping by today. I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and the exchange story it's one of the spontaneous beautiful things that "just happened" and I consider myself very blessed to have "met" Melissa and I feel blessed to have "met" so many of you online...and you know who you are.

Comments are always welcome and appreciated. I read each and everyone of them and they all mean so much to me. Thank you for visiting.

Luv and Stuff,

TattingChic :)

UPDATE: Melissa received the ice cream cone and bookmark and just LOOK what she did with the ice cream cone! It's so cute.

Rainbow Sherbert Cone, Anyone?

I am really enjoying the 25_Motif_Challenge so far. Thank you Sharon for all your hard work on that.

My last endeavor caused so many rainbow sherbert and ice cream cone cravings from all the yummy colors that Dantatter suggested to me that perhaps I should tat an ice_cream_cone and I thought, "What a great idea!". So, I took on the challenge. Have you had the good fortune to meet Dantatter, yet? If you haven't you really should hop on over to her blog and visit for a while. She really is a talented tatter. She also has a website with her prolific tatting; lot's and lot's of tatting eye candy there for you to oogle.

Anyway, back to the ice cream cone challenge. I had already had my eye on another ice_cream_cone pattern by Eliz_Davis for a while so I did that one instead. It has the use of the beautiful Valeire_Square named after the designer, Anna Valeire, from the early 1900's.



So after eating several ice cream cones (Ohhhh, the calories were soooooo worth it, yes!) I finally got around to tatting one and here it is...TAH DAH!!!



Motif #3 The Yummy Rainbow Sherbert Cone

Doesn't a yummy ice cream cone or sherbert cone of your favorite flavor sound good on a warm day? I think it even sounds good on a cool day...Yummy. Speaking of yummy I used some more of LadyShuttleMaker's Yummy Grapefruit HDT (Hand Dyed Thread) in size 20 for the "scoop of sherbert" and DMC's Cebelia color #437 size 20 for the "cone". There is another place to find this particular pattern by Eliz Snow and that's on one of her blog_posts.

Well, now that this is done I promised Melissa from HoneyBeesBliss that I would join her in a pretty doily tat-a-long over at eTatters. It looks like a lot of fun and if you are looking for something to tat feel free to join in the fun! If you don't tat feel free to look around I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have about tatting. Comments are always welcome from my wonderful "Tatted Ring of Bloggers" friends, other blog-world friends, and newcomer's alike. Thanks for popping in for some rainbow sherbert today!

This is a pretty "linky" post wouldn't ya say?

I'm Goin' IN!!! Doin' the 25 Motif Challenge...ready....set...GO!

There comes a time in every tatter's life that we must challenge ourselves to become the best tatter we can be...I have, after deep thought, ponderance, meditation....and okay I'm just B.S-ing
you guys. I thought it would be fun to finally just jump in there and do the 25 Motif challenge. Woo Hoo!
So with out further ado I present to you

Motif #1 The Wheel of Fortune Heart.

This little heart is made from HDT (hand dyed thread) called Yummy Grapefruit and Seaweed both in size 20 and dyed and sold by LadyShuttleMaker. The colors are so scrumptious that I kept having the urge to consume rainbow sherbet and lime sherbet while tatting this heart. Does anyone know why? That was a hypothetical question, just in case anyone was wondering...hee hee. The Wheel of Fortune Heart is designed by Teri Dusenbury.


Next we have
Motif #2 My Version of Karin's Scrunchie

You remember Karin right? She and I were partners for the May Bookmark Exchange. I used size 20 thread for mine and it took a long time. Karin used size 10 and I'll bet it didn't take as much time. It looks like YarnPlayer tatted one, too this week. Yay!!!!! GO SCRUNCHIES!!!! Let's see everybody's scrunchies out there in tatting blogger land!!! Yarnplayer makes some awesome possum HDT's, too. You can pick some of those up here if ya want. I have not been so fortunate yet as to have acquired some of hers, but I will (rubs hands together, sniveling) I will....heh heh heh...just you wait.

Karin has posted the pattern for her size 10 tatted scrunchie here for anyone who wants to try it. I highly recommend trying it in size 10 as it will go much faster you will have to tat far less rings to get around the elastic band. I used size 20 and it looks like we used the same amount of double stitches to get the ring around the elastic band so it is the same pattern just more rings have to be tatted.

Well thank you for popping by to share in some of my tatting insanity this week....er wait...did I say tatting insanity? I meant to say Tatting FUN!!! Yes, thank you for coming by to share in all the tatting fun going on around here.

Come on in, look around and leave a comment or two if you feel so inclined. I'm not prejudiced against non-tatters at all infact I'm related to several...I have several non-tatter friends. Tatter's are also welcome....I just didn't want all the tatters to feel left out from all the non-tatter talk. Okay, 'nough said? Comments are always welcome. Let me know if there's anything I can help you with tatting wise.