Pattern for the beaded flower

As I told before... beads phase im my tatting.
I just made this flower and someone wanted the pattern. It is not a big deal, it is not difficult at all.
Starting element is the most common 6 petal flower done with 1 shuttle. There are some beads on it. The second round just goes around the flower and the beads. This is the part wich gives a nice shape.
I guess someone else wiser and smarter tham me has to have found this idea before, but I never saw it. If it is the case, I apologize and I will be grateful if someone can point me the author, if there is one.

The pattern is done for a 12 Anchor Freccia  thread (like the 60 DMC, if I remember it correctly).

What you need: 30 seed beads.

Wind your shuttle and put the 30 seed beads on the thread.

Take 4 seed beads and start the ring. 8ds - 8ds - 3beads from the loop and 1 from the shuttle 8 close. The fourth bead from the loop will remain at the base of the ring.
Repeat 5 times, making the joins to form the flower.
Cut thread.
Easy.

Second round: all chains. (marked red)
Begin from the join picotsof the flower.
Chain 12ds, make lock join to the thread between the 2 seed beads.
Chain 4 ds - 4ds lock join after the bead on top.
Chain 12 ds lock join at the picot from the flower.
Repeat until the round is complete.

What I noticed while playing with this pattern.
For the outer round, you shoud add not more than 4 ds at the amount of ds used as a base for the flower. My case here: 8 for the flower, 12 for the outer chain. Less ds do not bring a nice shape, more ds will make a nasty join with overlaping chains.
When you make the lock joins for the outer round, you should consider passing the thread through the picot and not bellow the picot from the flower. Result: a smoother transition. When I made the join fom the lower part of the picot, I had a knottier join and a longer part of the thread was visible. Not nice.
The nastiest part: the join where the flower was closed... Patience needed.
If you use beads bigger than 1mm -1,5 mm, you should replace the 4 - 4 sequence with something fitting to your material.

Swap fever

I got the first introduction to the swap idea some time ago. I wanted to give it a try, so I put my name on the list. The hard part was about to come, working for it. It is one thing to give life to your ideas freely, just let my shuttle to make the ds as they fit better and a completelly other thing is to think: does it fit? does it bring some joy?
Preparing a present for someone you know is sometimes hard, but for a complete stranger is for me even harder.
I put up my head and hands to work ant I made a shy tatted necklace and a bracelet. Simple lines, no picots, just pearls and golden chain. The necklace is not symetric and the pearl in the center floates somehow but that's the charm of it...

 

 

For the second swap (yes, there was a second one too), I got bolder. A white and royal blue neclace with pearls. All tatted, Ankars style, ring on ring method. It was not the first time I used this pattern. My wrist watch has it, in a more complexe variant. 

There are 5 elements all put toghether. The flowers and the split chains, the lateral sides and the central element (the one from the pattern from the last blog post).

Result? 

The pattern for the central part is here, I just added a small blue flower underneath, a bigger white one to give it a nice aspect on the backside too and I left 2 petals on the upper part of the element. I sewed them togheter, joined the chains with a pearl element and this was it. Chouchoutte loved it... I hope. 

I forgot, of course, to write something about the technique... It was taken for some sort of macramé, not that far away, I would say, also knots, wright? And we can also finger tat... 

Now I struggle with pearls... all the way... I made some test patterns, I will have to make some research if they are not already done. I miss somehow a good personal library with all kind of elements nicely organized. I always am affraid that the ideas I have may have been published already... The white flowers are similar to the camelias pattern, without the use of teh seed beads... 

The orange flower is to be disregarded... it is just a test to see how this thread works with white glue for fixing... So far, so good.