Shuttle Tatting Without A Teacher (10)

I urge you to try both ways. I have great faith that you will discover for yourself that the first method - or the down-join - leaves a join which blends with and shows better continuity with the rest of the stitches in the ring morę smoothly than the ‘up’ join (which is the traditional method of joining).

I feel that while you are learning, you might as well learn what is today considered the most presentable methods for creating beautiful tatting. That is why (and the Shuttle Brothers, Randy & Gary Houtz, do this too) I am teaching you the ‘down-join’ from the very beginning. There will also be times when in order to effectively balance the fin-ished piece, that one or the other or both joins may be used quite effectively. The only way you will be able to determine this is if you practice both kinds of joins.

The long written directions which you have just been given are representative of one way of writing patterns for tatting. I want to show you examples of some other ways to write a pattern for tatting.

The pattern for the simple ring and Chain edging that we were practicing making can also be written in the follow-ing ways.

R 5—5—5—5 RW or - - >

* CH 3—3—3—3 RW R 5+ (to last p of last R) 5—5—5 RW Repeat from * for desired length.

I would suggest that you do at least enough repeats of this first pattern so that all your rings look to be the same size and all your stitches and chains are even. AND pi-cots show only where they are meant to be.

It is okay here, too, to practice doing different things with picots. Long picots offer a morę lacy effect to the tatting. However, joining to a longer picot will also make the tatting morę pliable. You may want to try making the picot which will be joined by the next ring just long enough for joining. Picots in the chain may be of any desired length, what you may want to practice here would be to make the picots all the same length.

What we have iust done is essentially iust the first class for learning to tat. Albeit perhaos the most important session, there are many other technigues and practices which will allow you to create better and morę beautiful tatting.

This short additional lesson will introduce you to a lot of different techniques which are necessary to learn if you want to move on to the morę exciting realms of advanced tatting. (DON’T be frightened by that word advanced. I only use it to separate these techniques from just flipping the knot as already leamed).

I mentioned earlier (p #15) about the possibility of working a sufficient number of repeats of this most simple edging. For practical purposes to make the lace edging mentioned, you may want to start with a fuli shuttle.

SO, wind that shuttle until it is nearly fuli of thread.

DO NOT CUT THE THEAD.

Work the first ring of the pattern given, then reverse and work a chain. As you work the chain, you will notice that there are NO ENDS to work in when you start this way. This method of starting is the Continuous Thread Method. Often shortened to CTM. Continue to repeat the rings and chains until you have a piece of lace long enough to go around the neck of that t-shirt or sweatshirt. I recommend using this method of starting whenever pos-sible. It makes about half the ends vanish.