Tatting Pattern Calendar: Southern Illinois Fruit Bat: Tootie Fruity by Ruth

I spent the weekend with Georgia Seitz, Mark and Kim Myers, and the lovely ladies from the Evansville IN tatting group at the Lincoln Log Cabin Festival in Greenup IL. It was a fun time although unseasonably hot! 92 degrees and humid makes people follow the shade, and wilts the thread.

While visiting with Georgia Saturday evening I worked on this cute little Halloween bat! I had started on her on Thursday while K & Sheila Boniface and I sat at my dining room table talking tatting and looking at books.

The bat has a 6mm magnetic hematite bead in the center to enable her to stick to your fridge. Tat her with any color thread. Brown, orange, or black threads look more like a Hallowween bat to me. The orange (fruit colored) bat is tatted with omega size 30 thread and a 6mm magnetic hematite bead from Hobby Lobby. I bought some 4mm ones at Joann today. They have 3 different sizes of these beads. I bought the thread from ZigZag corner in Greenfield, IN.

The number of stitches will need to be adjusted for different thread or different size bead. To find out how many stitches you need to put a bead in the center of a ring tat a series of rings with the thread you wish to use beginning with about 10 ds. Tat rings with 12, 14, 16, etc stitches and if your bead is too small for one, but too big for the next smaller use the odd number of ds between the two.

I tat the bat using a beaded double core reverse ring BDCRR. Any method to put a bead inside a ring would work just fine, including sewing it in later, or just good ole glue. To tat it my way, put the bead on your thread, and then wind a couple yards of thread onto your shuttle with the bead between the shuttle and ball. Wrap the thread around your hand for a ring two times. The bead should be positioned on the first wrap at the back of your hand out of the way.

All the double stitches on this ring are reverse stitches (encapsulated); no flip and 2nd half first, first half second.

BDCRR

On both core threads tat reverse stitches:

(3 - 3 - 3 -

Remove the core with the bead on it from your hand and let it hang out of the way. Tat reverse stitches on the one core still on your hand.

3 - 3)

CLose the BDCRR in a three step process:

1.
Pull slightly [about 1/2”] on the core thread end, NOT the shuttle thread!
The core with the bead on it should get a little smaller.

Pull on this BEADED core thread so the other core closes first. Do not close tightly, leave about 1/8” open. When you complete the final step this core will also close completely.

Finally, slide the bead up into the middle of the ring and then pull the core thread end until the ring is completely closed around the bead.

Leave a tiny thread space to join to later before tatting the wing.

Wing

Chain (8) turn

Ring (2 - 2) turn

Chain (8)

Reverse stitch chain (21) This is like doing block tatting. It may be done with a second shuttle if you wish. Join to the thread space at the beginning of this wing.

Chain 4 Reverse Stitches, and then join to the next picot.

turn

Head

Ring ( 3 - 3 - 3)

join back to the same picot, and then turn

Chain 4 Reverse stitches, and then join to the next picot.

turn & SLT

Tat the second wing the same as the first one.

Finally, tie the ends at the picot where this wing begins.

The ends may be tied together to form a loop for hanging (she will hang upside down and sideways, like a bat flying around looking for yummy bugs to eat!)

There are more BDCRR patterns in my newest book, Tatted Butterfly Garden, to be released soon. See the cover photograph on my blog.