Snowflakes, as you know, have six (or multiples of six) points. The Ice Drops I've been making with Liz Metallic can be ornaments, but they can't be snowflakes. Christmas will be here before long, and I need snowflakes!
After quite a bit of fiddling around, I finally figured out a stitch count that works for me. My rings are 5-4-5, and my chains are 5-5. With that stitch count as the basis for the first round, I can now move on and design snowflake Ice Drops!
Two Ice Drop Addicts have been very instrumental in influencing me to move beyond the basic Ice Drop pattern I started with about two years ago... Sarah Wood and Shelley Perreault.
Sarah posted instructions for a one pass Ice Drop in our Facebook group. I had tatted an Ice Drop the way she described, but I didn't like the look as much so I never posted any ideas. However, many tatters in the group did, so I started doing a little experimenting. The method still didn't grab me.
Soon Shelley posted her Peacock Coins pattern. I printed it out, but since it was a one pass Ice Drop I didn't try it out until Shelley asked me to test tat it for her. She wanted to make sure her instructions were clear. They were! Again, even though I liked the pattern, the idea of the one pass method just didn't do it for me.
Then I discovered bottle caps. Lisa Adams had some bottle cap needle minders at Tatting Corner Tat Days this summer. I bought one and decided to try making some for myself. What a mess! Magnets, glue, and bottle caps require a level of coordination that is beyond me. Of course I had purchased enough bottle caps to supply all of my tatting friends. I guess I heard the saying, "Go big or go home!" too many times. 😁
As you may know, I then became intrigued with flattening bottle caps with a tortilla press. Trust me... you don't want to get started doing this. It can become another addiction! The flattened bottle caps just had to be decorated with beautiful designs and tatting. Don't you agree? My basic Ice Drop pattern needed too much tweaking to work with bottle caps, so following Sarah's and Shelley's lead I started using the one pass method.
The nice thing about using the one pass method is that you can make adjustments as you go so that your cabochon fits snugly inside the tatting, no matter what size cabochon or thread you use. That doesn't work with my method. Now I think it's time for me to revisit Edda Guastalla's patterns and do some more experimenting!
