I'm still just a beginner, but I'm proud to call myself a tatter. Shuttle tatter, actually :)
In case you're interested, and haven't heard it before, here's the short version of how it all started:
One day towards the end of July I found an old tatting shuttle in my grandmother's stash, and I knew my mother knew how to tat, so I had her teach me. The shuttle has belonged to my great grandmother, and I'm very happy to be allowed to keep it and proud to be able to use it :)
Like many other things in my life, tatting soon became an obsession. I love collecting stuff, and shuttles became natural collector's items. I like the shape of them, and they come in so many pretty colors - I need to have them all! Judging by my shuttle collection and the many tatting books I've aquired you'd think I've been tatting for years and not two months :p And I don't think I'll ever have enough pattern books, even with the amount of free patterns you can find online. There's just something special about books... I need to have my own library when I grow up!
Anyway, the first evening when my mother tried to teach me I couldn't do it. You know, flipping the stitches, it just didn't make sense. In the end I just threw the whole thing away in frustration and continued crocheting instead. The next day I was tatting all by myself! I guess it helps to sleep on things :) (That's literally what I did! All summer I slept on a double sofa-bed, and the half not occupied by me was constantly covered with all my craft stuff...)
Here's the first item I made:
The pattern is Flower Bookmark by Yarnplayer. You can see that I didn't use a picot gauge... Later I made the bookmark again, but I added big black beads instead of making the dreaded picots:
The thread is Mölnlycke Virkgarn in pink, size 20.
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What a wonderful story! I first learned of tatting when a friend gave me a tatted cross bookmark as a thank you gift. My mother knew what tatting was, but didn't know how to do it. I tried to learn from a book on and off for about 20 years. Then, a friend of mine found a tatting video, and we were each able to learn the technique in about 20 minutes! That was almost 20 years ago. I never tire of tatting!
ReplyDeleteMy mother has taught herself to tat, about ten years ago I think, but she only knows how to do basic rings and chains because the booklet she learned from is very old. Everything else I have learned on my own from books and YouTube videos :) Don't know what I'd do without the internet!
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