tatting

"angel" wrote

Hi Angel - Someone over in rec.crafts.textiles.yarn was talking about tatting a few days ago so you might have better luck over there. I taught myself with a book about 20 years ago - but didn't ever do much with it - its not hard to learn. Good luck!!!

I took a continuing ed class on that a couple of months back, it was fun. However, I wouldn't call learning anything about needle arts "easy." Not to say that should put you down easily, but it's like learning to ride a bike. Hard at first, and you might even get a few cuts and scratches on the way, but soon it's smooth sailing, and fun too. If you need help I would either point you to rec.crafts.textiles.yarn or rec.crafts.textiles.needlework. They'll set you strait.

IMO it is one of the easiest forms of decoratively tangling thread there is. It is certainly not messy. One tool, a bunch of thread, you are ready to go. Though a teeny crochet hook helps when you get beyond the first ring.

NightMist sometimes combines tatting with crochet

I've done tatting for years. One of the handiest gadgets I have is a wooden handled crochet hook, the hook is a fine metal, a hole is drilled through the top of the wooden handle and has a ribbon through it that I hang around my neck. Then while tatting, the hook is always handy.

If you do decide to take up tatting the shuttles are like scissors and sewing machines......not all styles work for all people. The upside of this is that they are not expensive so you won't have to take out a second mortgage to replace one that doesn't seem to comfortably work for you.

Val

There are a couple of types of tatting, shuttle and needle. Needle tatting is a lot easier for me than shuttle. DIY books and the needles are available. Some links here:

Everything I know is posted at

You will notice that the two pages you are most interested in are blocked from access. I used to have a theory that since chaining is easier than making rings, the student should start with chains.

Then I tried it on an actual student, and discovered that this works only if the student is already expert at controlling thread with the left little finger. So the "how to learn" pages need a drastic re-write and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Most how-to-begin tatting instructions make a great and mystical stumbling block out of something they call "the flip" or "the click" or "the transfer" or . . .

All in the world that's meant by this is that you tie a knot by first weaving the shuttle around a thread held taut by your left hand, then you PULL THE SHUTTLE THREAD STRAIGHT while slightly relaxing the tension on the thread in your left hand, so that the ring thread can wind around the now-straight shuttle thread.

It sounds very mysterious to tie a knot in the ring thread by manipulating the shuttle thread, but in practice, it's as straightforward as untying your shoes by pulling on the ends of the laces. Tying knots indirectly allows you to tie them in rapid-fire quick succession, and it also allows you to tie knots that you can't even see, so that it's possible to tat much finer lace than you can macrame'.

For the coarser tatting now in vogue, much use is made of what Nicholls called "false tatting" -- perhaps "synthetic tatting" would be a better name; like synthetic ruby, it's an exact duplicate of the real thing. In false tatting, you tie knots around the ring thread with the shuttle thread in a straightforward boy-scout manner reminiscent of embroidery -- Enthoven's "up-and-down buttonhole stitch", to be exact. False tatting is slower than tatting, and requires better eyes, but short stretches of it make it easy to create designs that would be difficult or impossible in tatting alone.

False tatting is usually referred to as "split-ring technique" or "split-chain technique", because it's nearly always used to make a ring or a chain that ends in the middle. Nichols used it to produce dead ends, as in her "bunch of grapes" and "Seven-branched Candlestick".

I think Nicholls would be much gratified to learn that with the advent of the World Wide Web and common access to e-mail, the false chain is finally "considered worth development".

Joy Beeson