Mardi Gras Tatting February 12, 2013

Although Mardi Gras evolved from a combination of pagan and other religious customs, such as observing Lent by eating no meat, the celebration of Carnival (carnival is a corruption of the Latin word, carnelevarium, which means good bye to meat) today is a fun event with lots of opportunities for dressing up. And this means a great opportunity for tatters to try their hands at designing. Take one of the satin masks available and dress it up with tatting.

Tat a butterfly with large negative space in the center of the wings and stitch it to cloth, make eye holes and add a ribbon to tie it on. Instant Mardi Gras mask!

I surfed the web looking for tatting items related to Mardi Gras. Of course, I thought of Totusmel, aka Pamela Quevedo, whose work is fantastic. See samples of her tatted masks here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/TotusMel?section_id=5632031

And on the Online Tatting Class website index of lessons for 2007, I found the link to the Mardi Gras mask shared with us by Helen Bailey. http://www.georgiaseitz.com/2007/hearthankymask.html

When I binged images for Mardi Gras tatting I found just a few on this page. http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tatting+%2bmardi+%2bgras&qpvt=tatting+%2bmardi+%2bgras&FORM=IGRE

Also on the Online Tatting Class website, I found a great butterfly pattern by Edda Guastalla from 2002 which I think would tat up well to use as a mask by itself without backing just stiffening. The chains in the center of the upper wings could be greatly shortened to provide the eye holes. There are points on each side of the upper ring perfect to attached ribbons.
http://www.georgiaseitz.com/2002/eddabfly.html

And imagine this butterfly in the traditional Mardi Gras colors, purple which represents justice, green which represents faith, and gold which represents power. And what a wonderful place to do beaded tatting. All those colors offer so many possibilities.

Here's the latest article from the Tatting site at BellaOnline.com.

Heart, Jan Stawasz
Jan Stawasz shares his heart pattern from his new book, "Tatted Treasures." Experienced tatters will recognize that this is his homage to the late master tatter, Mary Konior. (See his acknowledgement on the diagram.)

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art9906.asp

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http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=39

I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback!

Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge!

Georgia Seitz, Tatting Editor
http://tatting.bellaonline.com

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