[I am following Anne Brooke‘s 2021 #52tagshannemade slow stitch challenge to make a little tag every week of the year – see them all here!] I was very excited for this week’s challenge because I have always wanted to try tatting! Anne gave us very easy instructions and as I played around with the picots, I decided to make a turtle so this tag is another little landscape.

HR finally cleared me to work in person, and though I already knew the campus is a declared botanical garden, it still feels unreal that I get to see it every day! For my very first day, I was a bit early and sat near the duck pond. A turtle popped out of the brush to walk across the path in a hurry, hit a curb it didn’t want to climb over, and went back to the pond. It was a nice little treat to see.

I just used some strips of cloth and then made tiny tatted flowers in addition to the picot tatted turtle. Their centers are colonial knots. The turtle has straight stitches to fill in the legs and tail, a lazy daisy stitch to fill in the head (with two colonial knots for the eyes), and its shell is done with darning stitch. (Incidentally, I was also inspired to make a new anklet with tatting, but while it seemed fun at first, it was a lot of tatting – I hope it lasts a long time because I don’t want to make another any time soon!)