Vineyard Harvest Butterfly

Hi All,

Long time no blog! I've been so busy enjoying other people's blogs I have neglected my own so thought it would be time to share something new. Don't you love the great metal findings that are coming out in the stores now? For years I have been incorporating lots of them in with my tatting. Some work great and some well let's just say I attempted to create something with them but need more time to figure out exactly what they are going to be. Then there are others like this butterfly that just turn out with hardly any effort at all. Actually, that isn't true but it did work up easier than most! This one is done in Lizbeth, Size 20 Vineyard Harvest. If you have worked with this thread then you probably know what I figured out when doing this necklace.

It matters which way you use the thread! (I'll explain more below.)

I am a two shuttle kind of girl. If I am working chains I usually have the thread on a shuttle. I wind my main shuttle from the ball then wind another shuttle that I am going to use to work chains from the first shuttle. Well for this project I guess I thought that I was going to need more chain thread than shuttle thread so I used the second shuttle as the one to make the rings. I decided the start in the green section of the thread because it is the shortest color and it wasn't too far to the tip of the butterfly wing. It worked perfectly as the hot pink in the thread began at the point. I was very pleased and finished up the one side. The realized hmmm I am going to need to do the mirror image of this. So I took my empty shuttle and filled it from what I used as the "chain" shuttle which was the thread that came directly from the ball. Had to flip the butterfly over and work from the back side, but it worked.

A couple a weeks later a friend of mine had asked if I would make her one and I said sure. So I sat down to wind shuttles but had forgotten that I had done the swap and it wasn't working. The colors were coming out all wrong. I thought "Now wait a minute I know I used this thread, what is going on?" It was until then that I realized "oh I reversed the thread." just by switching the shuttles the thread order was changed. So I loaded the shuttles as before and everything worked out. So the next time you work with multicolor try tatting it both ways to see which you prefer. Of course only those of us who tat will have an appreciation of all the thought that goes into making something like this. For those who see the end result think "what a pretty thing."