Earrings and Learning a New Technique

 One of my friends at church loved the butterfly earrings I made my sister in law so much - that she requested I make a pair for her in brown.  This was my first tatting sale.

 

I loved the blue earrings I made for my mum-in-law so much that I decided to make a pair for myself with some silver seed beads.

At Saturday's Shuttlebirds Tatting Guild meeting, I learned how to make flowers branch up off a chain.  The chain pictured starts with playing around a bit with pearl encapsulation.  Then it moves into the flowers and a branching encapsulation technique.  I love this technique and look forward to using it in many future pieces.

The pattern we worked from during the meeting is "Thicket of Flowers" and can be found in Sherry Pence's Branching Encapsulation book.  The pattern is very well written.  She clearly explained each step.

I went away from the meeting knowing the following:

* how to work with three shuttles

* how to spiral tat

* how to encapsulate the stem of a flower so that I ended up back down at the chain

I will be tatting this afternoon with my mom.  She is working on making a flower and getting the closing join down.  I plan on trying some branched off elements on the flowers (following the part of the pattern I didn't get to on Saturday).