Marie Smith’s Mignonette Beaded Bag

The other day I was surfing through Craftree (an on-line tatting/fiber arts forum) enjoying all the wonderful projects when I saw a Mignonette beaded shuttle bag. This enticed me to YouTube to see how it was done which I found very interesting. But interesting enough to try it?

I had a couple of shuttles with thread left on them, so I used those to test out the pattern for Marie Smith’s Beaded Mignonette Bags, minus the beads. It was kind of fun. I did increase in two rounds instead of one, which made the piece pretty flat.

Another couple of rounds caused it to round up nicely. This is the first time I’ve tried mignonette tatting and enjoyed it. But to do an entire piece this way?

It takes a lot of beads to make one of those little bags. A LOT. At least for a person who rarely uses beads. So, do I still want to try it? Maybe I should dip a finger into all of that before threading a whole tube of beads – just in case.

The little finger-tip bead experiment was a success, I liked it.

Now, what color thread and beads to make the entire project? I hunted through my stash for a tube of beads I bought who knows when that I have wanted to use with Lizbeth Caribbean thread some time, some place. Now looks to be that time.

I succeeded in stringing about 200 hundred beads on each side, as explained in the pattern. It was supposed to be 250 beads on each side but I was short of patience. The Sew Mate shuttles I used are a bit small for this many beads strung on. The tips were a touch loose and the thread and beads made them a smidgen too fat to be comfortable, but I consoled them the beads wouldn’t stay on long.

It started taking shape nicely. With all the beads strung on at the beginning of the project, I didn’t lose any on the floor.

This worked up a lot faster than I thought it would. I was able to work on it during my commute to work. Some of the moves to the next row are a bit, hmm, shall we say, not so pretty? But that started to get better as I continued.

I watched videos by both Gina Butler and Frivole to make this bag. Frivole tells you to switch shuttles after climbing down to the next level, which is how I made this one. I wonder what this variegated thread would look like if I had done it Gina Butler’s way?

By this time I’m getting pretty excited. Look how far I had come?

Sometime about here I didn’t pay enough attention. Somewhere about here I made several mistakes.

One shuttle ran almost completely out of the thread and the other ran out of beads. Neither issue is a tragedy, but they sure slowed me down. I unwound the thread on the one shuttle – almost at the end – and added the beads I would need to finish the round, and continued on to that end.

Adding thread isn’t impossible. I’ve watched Gina’s video several times, she makes it look easy. Before I do that I need to ask myself “how much further are you going to go?”

To be continued…

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson