Teneriffe mat

I finished this mat yesterday morning. It consists of 7 medallions like this one sewn together. When I first started I wondered if I would be able to make 7 identical medallions without getting bored, but since I took it nice and slow it wasn't bad at all. I think I averaged ~ 2 per month.

Repeating the same medallion also allowed to me figure out the best way of making this lace (mainly spreading the spokes) to achieve the best tension. Initially I used a thick cork pad which did not work out at all. There was absolutely no give to the pins at all, and by the time I got to the outer round of knotting I could not even knot the threads together properly. Then I tried my needle lace pillow, which had too much give and resulted in a very sloppy looking medallion. I finally settled on using a plastic disc (a yogurt lid...) which seemed to work the best. It wasn't quite as convenient, but I think the final results are worth it.

Yesterday morning I decided that I would complete the mat and sew the medallions together. I probably should have thought that one through a bit more... I am an absolute klutz with a needle! Although the book provides directions on how to sew the medallions, they are all written out with no diagram. When the author says "oversew the stitches" I am pretty much clueless as to what that means... I kind of fudged my way through it and it shows.

I am a bit lost as to what to do now. I don't want to start anything big - not like I have any patterns. I think I will just go through various techniques that I want to learn and make little individual medallions. At one point though, I want to go back to learning how to sew them together in such a way to end up with a nice finished product.

I will also definitely move on to smaller thread. All these medallions were made with DMC 20 and I was getting a bit sick of it by the end.

Final size: ~ 6 in. diameter

Here is a scan of the individual medallions before they were sewn together. The problems I had with tensioning is quite obvious!