Snowflakes

I am finished making crosses for now and have moved on to making snowflakes. I love tatting snowflakes.  There are many beautiful patterns and the lacy, delicate look of tatting mimics a snowflake well.

This snowflake is a Jan Stawasz pattern done in Altin Basik 50 metallic gold.

I was a little disappointed in the final product.  It seems a little dense, not enough negative space for a stand alone snowflake.  It is a motif from a larger doily pattern from the book Tatted Treasures.

This next one is a design by Robin Perfetti called First Snowfall.  You can find this and all her other free patterns here.

I really love this pattern and will tat it again in a larger thread.  This one is done in Finca Perle Cotton # 12 in color #8728 which is a silvery/gray color.

Another beautiful pattern by Robin Perfetti is called "Design Tutorial Snowflake" and can be found from the above link.  I think this is my favorite of her snowflakes.

The pattern is written to do the snowflake in two rounds, which is perfect if you want to do each round in a different color.  I chose to do the snowflake in one color, so I was able to skip from round one to round two by using split rings.  I started the first round on the third ring of an inner trefoil so that I would end on the larger middle ring, which I make a split ring of 3+3-3-3/3+3-3-3-3.  Then the first small ring of the second round was made 6/6 with a small mock picot between the two rings.  This is how it looks after the two split rings.

I then continued on with the chain, jk, and next ring when I notice that I had joined the second ring in the wrong spot.  But ignore that boo-boo and concentrate on my fancy-schmancy split rings to jump to round two.  Great pattern, quick to tat and looks beautiful in Lizbeth Ice Blue size 40.

And finally, we come to the last snowflake for today (but not for the season).

This pattern is by Renulek and is found here.  The onion rings in the center were a little tricky because I thought that the inner-most rings were thrown rings off the chain but they are not.  All of the inner rings are tatted with shuttle one as the working shuttle.  After a little fiddling, here's what I figured out.  Start with one of the inner most rings, then turn that ring upside down and tat the outer ring (the one inside the onion skin) next.  Then reverse work and tat the onion skin, joining at the intersection of the two rings.  Do not reverse work and tat the little chain going to the next ring.  Once I figured out that I don't need to switch shuttles, it was a piece of cake.