Tatting Pattern Calendar: August 11- Emily's Grand Champion Scarf

When my younger daughter, Emily, was 6 years old we moved to Michigan where I planned to return to college and study Computer Science. Berrien County MI has the world's largest youth fair, and my two older kids, Jen and Paul both had something to enter in the fair. Every kid who enters something gets a free pass for the entire week.

Emily wanted to enter something too! So the rule was that the child had to at least do "part" of the work no matter what age. So I tatted long ring and chain edging as shown above with yarn. It was long enough to wear as a scarf for a child or an ascot for an adult and about 6 or 8 inches wide.

The tatting is fairly simple, Rings with 3 picots, chains with 1 picot 3 ds between all. Leave the yarn ends about 8 inches long. You can weave yarn through between where the chains join together also if desired. Change the number of stitches if you wish. This was quick and easy, but I did use a very large netting shuttle to hold the yarn and it was kind of akward to tat with it.

The part Emily did was weave lengths of yarn between the tatting as shown in red on the diagram. She used a plastic yarn needle, and we measured the yarn so it was about 15 inches longer than the scarf. Then at the ends we gathered the woven through yarn and the yarn ends and tied overhand knots to form tassels.

Emily was just happy to have something to enter so she got her free pass... what a surprise when she won grand champion for her age group!!!