Tatting Pattern Calendar: April 9 Hector Flower by Ruth

This little tatted Daisy Picot Flower has BDS stem and Hanging cluny leaves.
Begin with about a yard of the flower center color thread on shuttle #1 and the petal color on shuttle #2. The green for the stem and leaves will be added later, or use the green for the flower center.

S1 Ring: 2
*S2 Petal 8ds tatted on the S1 knotting thread
S1 2 *
Repeat between the * * until you have 5 petals with 2ds between them and 2ds at the beginning and end of the ring. Then close the ring. The DAISY PICOTS will form when the ring stitches are slid together.

Tie the tails of the petal color together to bring the thread ends together so they may be hidden in the stem. Cut the flower threads from the shuttles leaving about 12 - 18 inch tails.

Put about a yard of green thread on a shuttle and leave about 18 inch tail. Insert the tail through the center of the flower and pull it through about 18".

Gather the 4 flower thread tails and the 18" green tail and wrap them together around your little finger like tatting a chain, but we are going to do direct stitches with the green thread on a shuttle to make the BDS stem.

You may wish to read my article on tatting long chains and large rings with the Balanced Double Stitch - BDS

The BDS simply makes a rectangular shaped knot instead of a wedge shaped knot by balancing the amount of thread under the core as is on top of the core. In other words, you can tat straight instead of curved chains and larger rings.

Tat 8 BDS, encapsulating all the other thread ends in the stem. The BDS can be done with encapsulating as easily as with flipped stitches. The shuttle just goes around the core thread twice before snugging up the first half of the knot, then around the core thead twice before snugging up the second half of the knot. Note: The thread will appear to form a little figure 8 around the core. This is what it should do. Just gently snug it up to the previous tatting, and slide the stitches together every few stitches to make it look good.

Encapsulating is like tatting the second half of a split ring, wrapping, or larks head knots, or reverse tatting. All the same thing, but different people call it different things.

Next we are ready to do the Hanging Cluny leaf. One green thread is the loom thread and the other is the weaver thread.

In my sample above I repeated the 8 BDS and another HCL then 8 more BDS.

Three crazy advanced techniques in one class at Hector Tat Days, and most everyone finished easily. A couple of tatters got it the second try, and there were a couple who decided to finish the final end of the stem later. All in all, it was a fun class!