Tatted Capelet

I found this large bag of lace scraps at a thrift store the entire bag cost less than $2.99 and had at least 5 such pieces in it plus a lot of crochet too. There are several usable pieces of crochet and tatted lace in the bag I just have to figure out what to use them for. The first piece I decide I would use was this piece of tatted lace made out of pearl cotton. It was already connected into a continuous piece. So I decided I would make it into another capelet.

The pieces of tatting are so large they make a strong focal point.  It was very simple to do put a shell edging around the already tatted pieces which added strength to them. Since the tatter is unknown I was not sure how strong the person was in their skills of finishing work. Upon inspection on the piece, the creator only tied knots at the end of their work and didn't weave the ends in so it is a fragile piece and will have to be washed by hand.   I rarely find tatted pieces that have the ends finished in a good way.  Yet it would be sad to toss that much work and not enjoy it.  Which means it would have to be made into an item that could easily be hand washed and not something that would get a lot of wear and tear. So after I had added the shells I started into the mesh area working with different techniques to get the valleys between the motifs to the same high so I could then just work up the piece simply with rounds of chains that get less and less number of chains near the top.  At the necks edge I once again lengthened the chains to give ease in the drape and finished it of with a picot edge took less than a day to do this transformation.  Those that know me know I do not usually wear pink.  But every now and again it is nice, would have been good at Valentines but I didn't have the scrap of tatting then.  Since the pink pearl cotton I used was also found junking(thrifting) a long time ago.  I have made a pair of gloves already with this thread.  So the few dollars I spent on that cone has gone a long way.  The whole item cost me less than $2.00 probably not even $1.00.  Not bad!