Tatting INFO

TATTING

Frywolitka (Polish), Frivolité (French), Schiffchenarbeit (German), Chiacchierino (Italian), タティングレース (Japanese), Nupereller (Norwegian), Фриволите (Russian)

 Antique tatting lace

Tatting is the art of creating a beautiful and versatile lace constructed by series of special knots and loops. This is what makes tatted lace so fragile and delicate in appearance, but very strong in structure.

With tatting you can create various ornaments, edgings, doilies, baby caps, baby booties, blankets, bookmarks, wedding veils, purses and much more. Nowadays it is very popular and versatile for creating tatted fashion accessories, such as necklaces, earrings, bracelets and so on.

Tatting is a TIMELESS ART FORM which has something for everyone.

There are 5 forms of tatting I heard about:

1.      Shuttle Tatting – the earliest method of creating tatted lace; (read more here

2.      Needle Tatting with a needle – tatters use a needle instead of shuttle but they follow the same technique of wrapping the ring and chain threads around the opposite hand;

3.      Needle Tatting on a needle – developed more recently; (read more here)

4.      Hook Tatting – developed in Japan. It uses a round shaft of regular gauge with a hook at each end;

5.      Tatting Crochet (Cro-Tat) – developed in the late 19^th century but is rarely used today; (read more here)

Patterns

In antique books you find out that patterns use a long handed description of stitches used (A ring of 4 double knots, picot, (2double knots, picot) 4 times, 5 double knots, close; turn…). Newer patterns use a lot of abbreviations with digits (R 4-2-2-2-2-5 cl rw).

Currently most of patterns are visual with a written pattern alongside.

Link: http://lalalime.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/life-in-general-my-first-tatting.html

If you would like to learn how to read a pattern, here is a link to a wonderful tutor Karen Cabrera’s video:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-bSD9lbsCU

Materials

Most crochet threads, available in craft stores, are suitable for tatting. However if you wish to get the best result from your tatting project, you should use special 6-cord type of thread. They are available in several brands including DMC Cordonnet Special, Flora, Olympus, Anchor Aida and others. But in my opinion the best thread for tatting is Lizbeth. It is 100% Egiptian cotton High Quality cordonnet thread.

Please be aware that the thickness can vary in different brands, even if the size number of thread is the same. On the whole, the larger the number the finer is the thread.

The history of Tatting

This link takes you to very interesting article:

http://www.victoriana.com/Embroidery/tatting.htm


For any question please contact me by email at artagnese@gmail.com .
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