Enchanting Eleonora

Iris Niebach’s Eleonora is a wonderful pattern. It is also not complicated (though I had to CUT a number of times, but I will not tell you where!)

For scale:

I tatted this with Sulky Blendables, a #80 type weight. I am getting very used to these teeny threads.

The only difficulty with this pattern is in a join where you hold the chain in a piece of thread as a downward facing picot, to later join up to with another chain. Many moons ago I had terrible trouble accomplishing this technique:

This is Vinnie’s Spring Doily, which you can find here. You can see the outer chains have a similar joining of two chains as Eleonora.

Happily, I now understand how to execute this join, which is not at all complicated, but at the time I just could not fathom it! It takes a LOT of practice and a couple of years to get these tricks mastered!

Then, as a break as I continue the edging, I remembered this seasonal motif that I like very much, but never tat properly.

Pattern in Lizbeth #40 

by 

LaRae Mikulecky

For scale:

The technique here one is still escaping my understanding...

How do you attach those JKs with a shuttle join to the space before the JK and after the last ds? That never makes sense to me and my finished piece does not look the same as the one in the pattern!