The Hexagon Project

Some time ago, when I was still busy doing Sacré Coeur, a friend of my mother in law asked me if I could do some tatting for her. I asked her what she was thinking of. She said she had a large dining table, and would like to have a runner all the way from one end to the other. Well, clearly she didn't know what she was asking for. So I told her that I would not be able to finish it during her lifetime. She then changed her mind and asked for a small doily to go on her new night stand.

So I started forming some ideas in my mind and came up with the crude design you see below. The idea was to have the empty space filled up with mignonette.

So as I started filling the inner space with mignonette, I found out that it was quite a challenge to come up with a way to fill a space this shape. Soon I found out I couldn't do it. So I changed the idea to first make a border to go round the center part, then do a couple of net stitch rounds, and finally another border to go round the net. Alas, it turned out that the shape of the original inner and outer motifs was such that the (already designed) outer rounds no longer fit! At that point I had already tatted the center part, because I didn't know yet that I would change it. You can see the initial center motif below.

So I needed to change the design drastically to make everything fit. I decided to change the inner motif such that it had two short and two long arms. I also made the band of net stitches narrower, such that the outer motifs fitted correctly. Finally I added another round to the doily, to give the corners more emphasis, and filled up the remaining empty spaces. The result is below.

Alas, I tatted the original center part for nothing! In any case you can see that the border is going to be very wide. Next time I'll show you some more details.