Good morning my dear friends!! Today we are going to flashback to the year 1998 when my craft of choice was tatting. Tatting is a form of lace making using a shuttle or needle often referred to as “a lost art”.
All of the women in my family do one form of needle work or another, I am the one keeping tatting alive and well. I began needle tatting in 1998 after seeing it demonstrated on a craft show. As a Mother’s Day gift for myself, I purchased a needle tatting kit and a ball of thread.
For those of you that don’t know what tatting looks like, here is a sample of my Grandma Nevill’s lace. All tatting consists of double knots and loops (called picots). The knots form rings and chains and the picots are used for connecting the rings and chains together and also as a decoration.
I only other examples of my Grandma’s tatting that I have is this dresser scarf. This is one of my prized possessions.
What is Tatting?
Traditional tatting, created with a shuttle, is something I was never able to completely master. I do have a nice little collection of shuttles though. I do wish my gradma’s shuttle was part of this collection, but sadly it isn’t. The newer shuttles are made of plastic, but I also have older shuttles made of Bakelite. The shuttle made of abalone shell is so very pretty, but my prize antique shuttle is made of sterling silver.
With needle tatting however, the stitches are first placed on a long thin needle. When the correct number of stitches is completed, they are pulled off the eye of the needle and formed into the desired ring or chain.
Tatting patterns look really crazy! At least I thought so the first time I looked at one! lol However it’s really easy when you understand the terminology.
“R” means you will be creating a ring.
“Ch” is a chain
“ – “ the hyphen is a picot.
“ – – “ two hyphens is a double or larger picot.
“Rw” reverse your work.
”DNR” is Do Not Reverse.
So to create a tatted ring you would see the following:
R 5 – 5 Rw
This means you will add 5 double knots to the needle, leave a space of thread, add 5 more knots and then remove it from the needle to form the ring, then turn it over and tie a knot.
For a long time I followed along with other patterns that I found online and in new as well as antique pattern books. Creating my own patterns began with this sweet little angel. One of the many tatters that I followed online took a popular snowflake pattern and, after making some adjustments, created an angel. I loved how it looked, but in my mind I saw something completely different, and more “angel like”.
After a while I signed up for a free GeoCities website and had my patterns online for the world to see. Sadly that site, [leen_tats] is long gone, but the patterns can still be found on the internet archive wayback machine.
Leen’s Tatted Angel
Today I thought I would start to bring them back and share them with all of you! Without further ado, I present my very first tatting pattern, Leen’s Tatted Angel.
This sweet little angel was tatted with perle cotton size 8, and is around 3 inches tall. I have done many different variations with this one pattern. If adding beads to the halo, they are placed on the needle as needed between the double stitches. When doing this, there will be a bit of thread looping over the top of the bead. The skirt can be designed in a few different ways. You can add double picots, or beads to give each angel a different look. If adding beads to the joining picots of the skirt, increase the number of stitches from 8 to 10 in the joining chains between the rows of the skirt.
Bodice R 6-6 rw
Skirt Ch 4-3-3-3-3-3-4 rw
Bodice R 6+6 rw
Wing Ch 15 rw, R 3-3 rw, Ch 12 rw, R 3-3 rw, Ch 9 rw, R 2-2 rw, Ch 6 DNR,
R 2-1–1-2 DNR, Ch 4 rw, R 3+3 rw, Ch 6 rw, R 4+4 rw, Ch 5 rw, R 5+5 rw,
Ch 8 rw
Bodice R 6+6 rw
Halo Ch 5-3-3-3-3-5 rw
Bodice R 6+6 rw
Wing Ch 8 rw, R 5-5 rw, Ch 5 rw, R 4-4 rw, Ch 6 rw, R 3-3 rw, Ch 4 DNR,
R 2-1–1-2 DRN, Ch 6 rw, R 2+2 rw, Ch 9 rw, R 3+3 rw, Ch 12 rw, R 3+3 rw,
Ch 15 rw, Join to base of 1st ring and chain, tie, cut and hide ends.
Skirt R 5+5 rw (join to picot of skirt chain), Ch 3-3-3 rw, R 5+5 rw, Ch 3-3-3 rw,
R 5+5 rw, Ch 3-3 rw, R 5+5 rw, Ch 3-3-3 rw, R 5+5 rw, Ch 3-3-3 rw,
R 5+5 DNR, Ch 8 rw, R 5+5 (join to picot of previous skirt row), Ch 3-3-3 rw,
* R 5+5 rw, Continue from ” * ” for a total of 9 Rings, Ch 8 rw Join to base of 1st
ring and chain, tie, cut and hide ends.
This angel below is made with Cebelia size 20, and is about 3 inches tall. I used double picots on the last row of chains.
Here is an example of the beads in the skirt and also in the halo. I changed the stitch count in the connecting chains between the rows of the skirt, from 8 to 10. She is made with Perle cotton, size 8.
Thank you for stopping by today! Stay tuned, I will be adding a few more of my tatting patterns in more Flashback Friday posts.