"ds" for "double stitch," "j" for "join," and a great many other abbreviations are used in printed patterns. Each printed pattern should include a list of the abbreviations used in that pattern, with an explanation of each. See "Instructions" in this index.
Objects which are not to be washed at all, such as pictures under glass, should be assembled with the fewest possible stitches, and these stitches should be kept near the centers of the pieces of lace so that the edges can lie naturally -- or rise up, if that is part of your design.
If an object is to be washed hard and often, the stitches on the back must be as short as possible, and nothing may be left to flop around; every single picot must have at least one stitch through it, and additional stitches are taken at joins, junctions, and the bases of rings. It is a good idea to try to take up most of the strain in the interior stitches, so that the picots won't be stretched out of shape by taking full responsibility for holding the lace to its background. When sewn properly, a washing appliqué appears to be embroidered into the fabric.
To save labor, it is well to design a washing appliqué so that it need be sewn only around the edge. (Even when you are fussy about the sewing-on, it is quicker to tat a design and appliqué it than to embroider lines of the same complexity.)
There are two ways to deal with picots in washable appliqué: secure them with inconspicuous stitches of a finer thread which matches the appliqué in color, or work an ornamental stitch into each picot with the same thread used for tatting, or with a contrasting embroidery thread. An odd number of lazy-daisy (detached chain) stitches worked into a small picot is attractive. Some designs benefit by a gradation: some picots sewn with the smallest-possible stitch, some with one detached chain, and some with a cluster of three.
If two picots touch, they should be secured by a single stitch which rises out of one picot and goes down in the other.
To reduce the number of ends, the tails of the tatting should be left long and used for sewing whenever practicable.
Embroidery floss makes beautiful stitches, but loosely-twisted threads wear away quickly when put to hard use; heavy-duty sewing thread or fine crochet cotton is better if the appliqué is to be washed frequently.
If lace is finer than the fabric to which it is sewn, it can be ironed from the back the way you press embroidery.
It is impossible to flatten thin fabric under a thick appliqué; either choose a fabric which doesn't need ironing, or make puckers part of your design. It helps to make the holes in a thick appliqué small, so that the rumples are hard to see.
Un-ironables can also be neatened by pinning them out to dry under tension after each wash. Pinning out gets tiresome, so it's best to count on it only for things which don't get dirty often.
Net is transparent, and it is important that the stitches not show at all, so net appliqué is sewn from the back. Instead of working between the threads of the lace and through the fabric, you work through the stitches of the lace and between the threads of the net.
Even if net provided enough purchase to sew picots down, restraining picots would spoil the design. After net appliqué is cleaned, every picot must be stretched individually while damp, and net appliqué tends to feature lots of picots. Arrange net trimmings so that they don't collect dirt, and make them easy to remove and re-attach when the garment (or whatever) is cleaned.
Do not neglect the precaution of washing or steaming the net and every bit of lace before they are assembled. You may be certain the piece will never get dirty, but you can't be sure that it won't get damp -- even a humid day may pucker lace that was sewn together without first relieving its internal strains.
I usually use fine threads off the ball as purchased, and re-wind coarse threads to get rid of the enormous hollow spools they come on.
Another approach is to stash your shuttle and work-in-progress inside the spool.
When you make a bookmark that you intend to put into a valuable book, don't use thread larger than #70, and finer is better if you can find it. Avoid cheap or artsy thread that might bleed, and thread with chemicals that might have an untoward effect on the pages. When in doubt, wind the thread into skeins and wash it. (Be sure to rinse out any cleaning agents you use! A soak in distilled water is the safest plan.) Thread you find in your granny's sewing kit is sure to be all right; if it were going to do anything nasty, it would be yellow or brittle by now.
On the other hand, you may be getting a slew of distant relatives off your gift list; in this case, make bookmarks from ribbon and work a little edging onto them, or appliqué small medallions to ribbon. Or work a beading and thread a ribbon through it. Another plan is to poke a ribbon through a hole in the tatting, then sew the ribbon to itself.
Choose ribbons that are pretty on both sides. For coarse bookmarks, use grosgrain ribbon. When buying thin ribbons, look for plain weave, twill, and double-faced satin.
If you have trouble finding very narrow ribbons, look at knitting ribbons, and ribbons sold for "silk-ribbon" embroidery. Be careful to buy ribbons with finished edges; they are more expensive than cut ribbons, but you are using only inches per project, not the miles needed for knitting and embroidery.
Lacemaker's tapes, if available, may also be of use.
Since a bookmark will never be washed, a good grade of gift-wrap ribbon may be usable. Since gift ribbon is intended to be thrown away immediately, it may or may not be safe to leave it in a valuable book for several decades.
A bookmark in use should hang out of the book a bit. When the lace itself hangs out, it's apt to become mussed and dirty -- not to mention that when you intend for the mark to stay entirely inside the smallest probable book, you must make it small, and therefore don't need to tat a lot. For these reasons, lace bookmarks often have attached ribbons, or a string ending in a small tassel.
One may use a pre-made string of some sort, crochet a chain, tat a straight chain (Seventh Exercise), make a twisted cord, or think up something else.
A good plan is to leave long tails at the beginning and the end and use these to make your string. Any end that hasn't got a ball or a shuttle on it should be drawn through the lace, so that you don't have the threads simply dangling from knots on the side of the motif.
If you need more threads than were left dangling, cut a thread twice the desired length, fold it in half, draw the loop through the lace, and draw the cut ends through the loop. (This knot is called a "cow hitch"; you will note that it's the same as a double stitch, but tied by a different method.) Try to place added threads where they don't add more strain to the tying-off knots. One way is to enclose the knot or knots and the bridge thread behind them, so that the new threads lie between the old ones. Another way is to tie to a spot behind the knot or knots, and weave the threads through the lace separately, so that they lie on either side of the old threads.
In a single-shuttle bookmark, a long beginning tail can be used as the ball for a node-stitch chain or josephine chain. (When you make the first bookmark, leave the ball on the tail, and note how much thread you'll have to unwind for subsequent tails.)
Work begun on a continuous thread can be treated like single-shuttle work, or an extra pair can be cow-hitched in.
In shuttle-and-ball work, use the shuttle and the ball as the two balls needed for pearl tatting, and wind the two tails onto another shuttle together, so that a double thread runs through the middle of the chain. A bit of ingenious macramé may be needed to get the tails between the shuttle and the ball; it's important to start with the threads lying the way that they will go, so that they don't cause the chain to twist. After tying off you will find that the beginning and end of one thread naturally lie between the beginning and end of the other, with the beginnings on one side and the ends on the other. Two adjacent threads can be exchanged by tying them in a half knot, and drawing a thread through the lace can change its position.
It is harder to make a twisted cord from threads that have a bookmark hanging from them than from new thread cut from the ball. One must twist each thread separately, through the same number of revolutions, then hold them together and allow the bookmark to spin.
One way is to lay two or more thread ends side-by-side on a finger, then roll them with the other hand. When only two threads are being twisted, you can roll them, let the bookmark spin until the twist has transferred from the individual threads to the pair, then separate the threads to push the twist down to the desired density, then roll again. When the cord is long enough, tie an overhand knot to prevent untwisting.
To make a plaited tail, you need four ends and four bobbins. Real lace bobbins are easiest to use, but four pencils, dowels, or skewers will do. The four "bobbins" should match, for easiest work.
Wind each tail onto a bobbin, and tie it in a half hitch around the top to keep it from coming unwound. If there is a groove around the top of the bobbin, it is for this half-hitch, which is a bit easier to manage when kept separate from the main winding.
To avoid confusing yourself, all four bobbins should be wound in the same direction. Both "Beginning Bobbin Lace" and "Practical Skills in Bobbin Lace" say that this direction should be "clockwise"; this appears to mean clockwise as seen from the top of the bobbin; the thread in the pictures winds in the same direction as the threads on screws and jar lids.
Pin the bookmark down in such a fashion that you can pull on the tails without distorting the lace. You will want a pin in the middle of the plait, between the two pairs of bobbins, to take most of the strain. If a lace pillow is wanting, use anything you can stick a pin into that is at a convenient height. It helps if the surface slants enough that you can put the bobbins down without getting them out of order, but this is such a short braid that you can do it all in one go.
Adjust the threads so that they are all the same length -- you can unwind thread without undoing the half-hitch -- and take the pair on the left side in your left hand, and the pair on the right side in your right hand.
Pass the left bobbin of the right pair to your left hand. At the same time, pass the right bobbin of the left pair to your right hand. The bobbin from the left should pass over the bobbin from the right. This is called "crossing the inside bobbins," and is easier done than said.
Pass the right bobbin of each pair over the left bobbin of the same pair. (The bobbins in one hand constitute a pair, no matter how often they change partners.) The passing over of the bobbins is accomplished with a sort of flip of both hands at once, and is called a "twist".
Separate your hands, maintaining light tension on the threads, to cause the weavings just made to travel up the threads and jam against the knots.
Cross, twist, pull until the new weavings snug against the first set.
Cross, twist, pull.
Cross, twist, pull.
. . . .
Cross, twist, pull.
When the braid is long enough, tie half a square knot to keep the cord from ravelling. Tie a whole square knot if you feel the urge; you'll still end with a plait that has a pair of threads pointing left and another pair pointing right.
Select a form a bit wider than the desired finished length of the tassel; you'll need to trim off irregularities.
My hem gauge happens to be perfect for winding #70 tassels; it's precisely three-fourths of an inch wide, and has a slot exactly where I want to put a #14 hook through the tassel to fish the binding thread through. Without such a slot, one has to wind the tassel over the binding thread -- a bit of a chore when the binding thread is attached to a bookmark. Other options are to wind over a loop that will be used to pull the binding thread through, use a blunt needle to pull through a loop to be used to pull through the binding thread, wind over a dental-floss threader, and on and on.
If you have four threads, cut three a bit longer than the planned length of the tassel, and plenty long enough for comfortable knot-tying. Leave the fourth thread long enough to thread into a needle. (If there are two threads, cut one and leave the other long.)
Wind the scraps around your chosen tassel-form, adding more thread from the ball if it doesn't seem fat enough. Make sure that all the ends lie on the side opposite the side where you plan to tie it to the bookmark, and that all the ends are longer than the proposed tassel.
Draw one of the pairs of threads at the end of the string through the tassel. Tie the two pairs together in a square knot, pulling the threads tight around the threads of the tassel. Be careful that this knot is exactly opposite the stop-ravelling knot. Tie as close to the fold in the tassel as you can.
Pull on the braid until the knot just made is inside the tassel, the binding thread is snug in the crease of the tassel, and the braid is in line with the tassel.
Cut the tassel off the form. It will probably be difficult to cut the threads with scissors; use a scalpel or a seam ripper. Be careful not to cut the binding thread that you left long.
Thread the long binding thread into a blunt needle and push it out between the threads of the tassel close to the tied fold. Make sure the tassel is the desired shape, and wrap the thread tightly around the tassel. When the number of wrappings is in proportion to the fatness of the tassel, push the needle into the tassel just at the top of the wrapping, down through the middle of the tassel, and out at the end. Pull on this end to make sure it is secure, then trim all ends to the same length.
Do the trimming in stages, first cutting the long ends, then clipping lint off those that stick out until the end of the tassel is nice and flat.
A continuous thread makes two fewer ends to dispose of, so most patterns worked with shuttle thread that matches the ball thread should be worked on a continuous thread whenever a new shuttle is wound for the pattern. In some patterns, however, two knots tying shuttle thread to shuttle thread and ball thread to ball thread make a neater finish than one knot tying shuttle thread to ball thread.
When you begin with a continuous thread, make sure that it is possible to re-wind your shuttle without cutting the ball thread. Keep another ball of matching thread, or re-wind the ball to pull from the center, so that both ends of the thread are available.
Half-stitch degenerate rings are useful for inconspicuously kinking chains, and for ornamenting long stretches of bare thread. They can also serve as "stoppers" when you want to put a picot at the beginning of a chain worked on a continuous thread. Use the plain half-stitch to make a half-stitch ring; a lone purl does not produce a knot.
I call these knots "degenerate rings" by analogy with the degenerate figures sometimes studied in geometry -- figures so extreme that they are other figures altogether. For example, an ellipse that gets narrower and narrower can degenerate into a line segment while still meeting the definition of an ellipse. More relevant to our discussion, a circle that gets smaller and smaller degenerates into a point.
A three-stitch ring technically has a hole, but the stitches fill it up, so the three-stitch ring looks like a degenerate ring, and can be put to the same uses.
Technically, an "edging" has one straight side and one ornamental side, and is intended to be sewn to an edge. An "insertion" has two straight sides, and is intended to be sewn between two edges. A "galoon" has two ornamental sides and I've never seen one, if you don't count lace fabric. I've used the word "edging" loosely to refer to any strip of lace. Nearly all tatting patterns can be regarded as an arrangement of variations on edgings; looking at a pattern from this point of view usually makes it easier to comprehend.
The simplest edging is a row of tiny scallops made by joining a single round of chain directly into the edge of the piece being trimmed. The same effect can be worked in the air by working a degenerate ring at each point.
If you don't tat directly onto a handkerchief or doily center, make the edging first, then cut linen to fit, because it's easier to make the linen fit the edge than to make the edge fit the linen. After it's washed and blocked or ironed, the edge can be measured by laying it on a piece of graph paper.
The linen must be washed and ironed before cutting, and if at all possible, it should be dried in a hot drier, such as the one marked "towels" at the laundromat. After being thoroughly dried, it should be dampened again and ironed with a hot iron. You don't need to be quite so rough with the lace, but the washing should be a full-fledged washing, not a mere steaming. The teensiest bit of shrinkage will pucker the perfect seam you have been at such pains to create.
Some workers sew the lace to the linen, then trim, fold, and stitch the hem. Others catch the lace in the hem stitches. Most hem first, then sew on lace. Study each project to see which order fits it.
Another plan: baste the lace to the linen as if for appliqué, attach it with cutwork stitches, trim the fabric away under the lace. This is used for both edgings and insets. You should, of course, learn cutwork before attempting the combination.
When you tat directly onto a handkerchief, there will be threads crossing the hem at each join. If the tatting does not match the fabric, these threads will have to be worked into your design.
One method of putting a red edge onto a white handkerchief is to use a white shuttle and a red ball, or the other way around, depending on whether it is the rings or the chains that touch the handkerchief.
Another way is to work a preliminary round in white.
Another way is to work a preliminary round of red chain loops ("simplest edge, above): the doubled threads continue the points touching the handkerchief. (This works better on narrower hems.)
Another way is to work embroidery with the tatting thread. For example, you can work backstitch through the row of holes used for joining. For work that is the same on both sides, use Holbein stitch: work running stitch through the holes, then fill in the gaps with a second round of running stitch. Be careful that the second round of stitches always comes up on one side of the previous thread, and goes down on the other, so that the two threads are twisted together and you get one line of embroidery, and not two dashed lines lying side-by-side. Or you can make three dashed lines, with the dashes of the middle line lying in the gaps of the outer two; this is a simple form of pattern darning.
There is a useful edging which didn't fit anywhere else. You can derive this edging from the "caterpillar" of the third exercise by working a chain around each ring instead of passing the thread behind each ring. Because it can be bent in any direction, it is particularly good for outlining a design. If used with the chains outside, it provides a delicately-scalloped edge to the pattern. If the rings are outside, the chain may wander off and do things before returning to make the next ring, which is convenient when you want to make your shape in one round.
>>..diagrams and a worked example
* R: 4--4-4--4
C: 4--4--4 &
Repeat from * for desired length. Join each chain to the tip of the newest ring, then make another ring and another chain. Most of the versions of this edging I've seen have at least three picots on each side of the ring, and at least as many picots of the same spacing in the middle of the chain. If the chain is only a little longer than half the ring, so that it fits closely against it, you will put no picots at all on the side next the chain. Most versions use smaller rings than those in this example, to emphasize the density and narrowness of the pattern.
The edging can be stiffened by joining the chains to each other as in the diagram, so that they form "U" shapes instead of half ovals.
Exercises: design a medallion in which the chains of the above edging are joined together after the manner of the rings in the scroll medallion, so that you get a spoked wheel with a rim of rings. Work the wheel around a ring, as suggested for the scroll in the Seventh Exercise. Substitute clovers for the rings in the edging or the wheel. Curve the clover caterpillar into a pinwheel.
In drawing in ends, we have a great advantage over our ancestors, who didn't have access to dental floss. Buy the cheapest dental floss you can find, because cheaper floss is thinner and can be used with finer thread. When your thread is too fine for floss, use silk or nylon sewing thread -- whatever is thin, strong, and slick.
When the finest thread is too coarse, look for a long-haired friend who eschews permanents, dyes, and other hair-weakening treatments. Collect hairs by running your fingers through his locks: combed-out hairs tend to get kinked and tangled, and cut hairs have not reached their full potential length. Lacking hair, perhaps a single fiber of dental floss will do -- don't look to me for guidance; when using threads that fine, I revert to the fray-and-glue method.
Try it first on a chain. Before starting the first chain of a medallion, cut off about half a yard of dental floss, then unwind about a quarter yard of thread from your shuttle. Fold the dental floss in half, and slightly twist the cut ends with the shuttle thread near the shuttle. Wind the doubled floss and the thread onto the shuttle. Make sure the loop of the dental floss extends a bit past the end of the shuttle thread; you want it sticking out when the chain is finished.
Work a sufficient number of stitches to hide the thread, then drop the floss. (It can be tied into a bow knot and the ends woven through holes in the lace to keep it out of the way.)
You needn't hide any more thread than you would have left flopping loose. It is easy to tat an entire chain over a loop of dental floss, but drawing an end through the full length of a chain is not easy. As the length of thread inside the tight stitches grows longer and longer, it takes more and more force to draw yet more thread inside. The dental floss won't break, but the lace might not be so lucky.
When the medallion is finished, tie off, thread an end through the loop, and pull on the cut ends of the floss to draw the thread inside the chain. The shorter the doubled bit of thread is, the easier it is to pull it through the chain -- and the easier it is for the thread to pull out of the loop inside the chain. Use judgement and common sense. Once the end is pulled through, pull it snug, then cut it under tension so that the cut end pops back inside the chain. (It's best not to cut any threads until all threads are hidden.)
You will have two ends to hide, so you'll probably want to put a floss loop in the last chain of the medallion too. The loop on this one is at the wrong end, but that is no problem. Just use the loop to pull another piece of dental floss into the chain, then use that piece to pull in your end.
If you need to hide two threads in one chain or ring, wind two pieces of dental floss onto your shuttle, tat an adequate distance for hiding the end, then drop one of the loops off your shuttle and tat two or three more stitches over the other one. When using sewing thread, make the two threads different colors. Dental floss comes in only one color, so put a safety pin through the loop you're not using, just in case you pull the wrong one. You can tell which end goes with which loop by tugging gently on the loop to see which end moves.
To hide two ends in the final chain, begin one loop a trifle more than the minimum distance from the end, tat two or three stitches, then add the other loop. Now you have a built-in safeguard against mistakes: pull a third loop of dental floss through, use it, pull it through by the other loop, use it again, pull the threads smooth, and cut them.
Note that up-and-down buttonhole can be worked over the edge of a piece of linen, or over the purls of a round of blanket stitch worked over the edge of a piece of linen, in order to blend embroidery and lace. Ordinary buttonhole stitch is easier to work, however, and can be obscured by a series of short chain loops joined into it.
For illustrations of how to work up-and-down buttonhole, see "How to Plain and Purl."
In other books, you may find false tatting referred to as "reverse tatting" or "wrong-way tatting." I prefer the term "false" partly because this style of tying knots isn't tatting, but produces the same results. The most important reason to prefer the term "false" is that "false tatting" has never been used to refer to anything else, while "wrong-way" and "reverse" have a plethora of meanings.
Anne Orr (p. 30 of Classic Tatting Patterns) uses "reverse stitch" to refer to a ring that is half real tatting and half false. Work half the ring in the usual way, then take it off your hand and put it back upside down and backwards. Begin using a second shuttle where you began before. Tat in your usual way, but keep the ring thread straight instead of the shuttle thread, so that the knots are formed of the shuttle thread. The ring will still draw, and will have two bases. Two threads enter the ring at one base and two threads exit at the other. This half-and-half ring may be made of two colors, and is a way to climb from one round to the next without breaking the thread. It can also be used to make pass-the-thread-behind patterns reversible, and to carry the ball thread to a new location without making a chain.
In The Joy of Split Ring Tatting, published in 1984, Mary Sue Kuhn named this formation the "split ring."
There are other ways to work split rings. In addition to the two authors mentioned above, look up Teri Dusenbury. Her Tatting Hearts is available from Dover, and includes instructions for split rings.
False tatting also allows you to end a chain in the middle. This formation is called a "split chain" because it's the same idea as the split ring.
If you have trouble comprehending printed instructions, copy them with each ring and each chain on a line by itself. You don't need the complete instructions, but only the numbers of doubles between joins and picots, and the "ring" or "chain" label. It will then be easier to compare the instructions to the photograph or diagram, see how the piece is made, and decide whether to make the design and whether to make changes. If you decide to make the piece, add comments and notes, make any changes you have decided on, draw a new diagram if they have been that sort of changes, and work from your copy -- keeping the original handy for reference.
Hook size isn't as important in tatting as in crochet, but it must be reasonably close. Too large a hook won't fit through a picot, or will catch threads you weren't fishing for. Too small a hook will catch only part of your thread and ravel it, unless you use the hook as if it were a pick.
If you find it hard to force a hook through a picot, stretch the picot by pushing the hook in from the other side, then try again.
To make the work stiff, or to create the impression that two joined rings or chains are merely tangent, make the joining picot as small as possible.
In very fine thread, you will need to use a full-size picot, not just because forcing a hook through a tight picot might break the thread, but because visible threads add to the daintiness of the work. (Not to mention that extra space between rings increases your inches per hour.) In moderately-fine thread, make a picot without a visible hole, and stretch it open before you use it. In medium and coarse thread, leave the thread slightly loose between two stitches, and stretch the loose spot into a picot immediately after closing the ring or completing the chain, before you forget where to look for it. In string or small twine, don't make any allowance for the picot at all, but pinch a short piece of thread or string into a V and drop it over the ball thread (or ring thread) to show where the join should be made. You can use the V-string to stretch a temporary picot into existence, or just push the hook through at the marker. If working in cord, you don't even need a marker; count the purls to find out where to join.
Strive to make a joining picot either visible or not visible; a forthright picot is more attractive than one that tries and fails to keep out of sight.
You can join to the inside of a chain. Drop a V-string over the shuttle thread at the desired spot. When you are ready to join, pull on the V-string and the two ends of the chain; this will fold the chain and pull out a picot of shuttle thread. Join as desired. Because the stitches are pushed apart on the inside of the curve, there will be a kink in the chain at the join. For a more-pronounced kink, make a degenerate ring instead of dropping a marker. Use a two-ds ring with one picot if you plan to join to the chain later; for a free-standing kink, use one ds for a point or a three-ds ring for a bulbous end.
To join to the inside of a chain without producing a kink, work a single node of node stitch, with a picot between its halves. The picot will appear on the inside of the chain. A gap in the row of purls will appear on the outside of the chain, but in fine thread it won't be noticed.
To join to both sides of a chain in the same place, work a picot, a node, and another picot, then join through both picots at the same time. The picots must be long enough to bridge the node without strain.
Another way to produce crossing lines: work one chain without any provision for joining, work the second to the point where the join is desired, then pass the shuttle to one side of the first chain and the ball to the other, and work the next stitch as close to the previous stitch as possible, so that the first chain is gripped between the stitches of the second.
Yet another: make a link picot at the point where the crossing is to be; make a two-thread join to this picot when working the second chain. (This method is used in the True Scroll, Fifteenth Exercise.) With a little care, the two chains will appear to have fallen into position.
Note: all the joins in this work are treated as the first half of the following stitch. Some designers make the join an independent operation that occurs between two stitches. If you want the same results as the designer, you must use the same methods. Treating the join as something that happens between stitches will make each ring a half-stitch bigger for each join -- if the design allows for the extra half stitch and you don't make it, the work may not fit together as intended.
You can also decorate one sheet of white paper with an edging, medallion, or whatever strikes your fancy, then photocopy it onto letter paper. Most copying services will let you bring your own paper, if it is a standard size. Bring the original package; slight rumples will prevent the paper from feeding, so you don't want to handle it any more than you have to. If you prefer small paper, decorate both ends of a standard sheet and have the copy shop cut the copies in half. They can jog some plain paper together with the copies and cut it at the same time, to make continuation sheets.
One way of decorating paper is to work your design in fine black or red thread and reproduce it as a lacy black silhouette. Moving the lever toward "light" will prevent shadows from showing on the copies, but moving it too far will show the highlights of the stitches. To decorate half-sheets, you can make two copies on white paper, use white correction tape to assemble the copies on an 8½x11 sheet, and have them re-copied onto your chosen paper.
Another way is to work the designs in coarse thread, in green or one of the other colors which don't photocopy well, and move the lever a little toward "light." The highlights of the stitches will have more pinholes than the shadows, which makes details show up almost as well as halftone would. Pinholes won't re-reproduce satisfactorily, so if you want half-size stationery, you must tat twice, or use the plain end of the paper for your continuation sheets.
An ambitious version of the "no detail" method: work a fine black or deep-red edging with outside measurements of 10 inches by 16 inches. It should fit on an 11"x17" sheet of paper with half an inch to spare all around. Cut and hem linen to fit the edging. Tat a large initial for the left side of the top, and embroider your address on the right. Baste in writing lines, spaced twice as far apart as you want them on your stationery. Include one short line under the address for the date. Copy twice at 50%, assemble the copies on 8½x11 paper. (Use white paper "correction" tape only -- never clear tape or shiny tape. Removable tape is easier to use than tape you must stick right the first time.)
For decorated continuation sheets, make reproduction copies for the continuation sheets first, then remove selected writing lines, add the initial and address, and make reproduction copies for the first page.
If the original is to be no longer available -- if you modify as suggested above, or if you put it into service as a place mat -- make extra black-on-white copies and file them in a safe place. Then if a copy machine rumples your reproduction copy, or if the cat gets it, you can use one of the back-up copies.
Mignonette is an easy way to make a single-shuttle fabric, and admits of infinite variation. It can imitate any netted lace, and there are un-nettable variations, such as joining the rings by long, long picots.
To illustrate the principle, I describe a net cover for balls of yarn, to prevent loosely-wound knitting wool from being disarranged. It is worked in a spiral from the center out.
Though the design is very simple, and requires nothing but the shuttle -- the spaces are so large that you can make your joins with the nose of a pickless shuttle if you have to -- this ball cover is not a pattern for beginners. The net is so loose and loppy that it's hard to tell what you are doing, and the long loops provide no resistance when you are trying to make joins.
Use coarse thread, no finer than #10 cotton.
First work a ring with twenty-four very long picots: 1-1-1-1-1-...1-1-1-1-1-1. Tie the beginning thread to the shuttle thread in a square knot. Leave a space of thread and *work a small ring (2+2), joining to the next picot on the central ring. Leave a space of thread. Repeat from * until you've used up all the picots, then join to the spaces between the rings of the previous round until the doily is large enough to reach three-fourths of the way up the ball of yarn to be covered. Tie off into the base of a ring. Sew each of the ends to the back of the nearest ring. Spread the cover out flat, and make a twisted cord a little longer than the circumference of the flattened cover. Weave the cord through the spaces of the last round, then set your ball of yarn on the doily. Smooth and draw alternately until the cover fits perfectly, leaving a large opening around the place where the yarn emerges from the ball. Tie the cord in a bow knot to hold the cover in place.
When you want to leave very long spaces, and make them all exactly the same length -- and this pattern is messy indeed if your spaces don't match -- you need some sort of gauge to measure your spaces. For this pattern, the tip of your index finger makes a handy gauge. Take the just-completed ring between your fingers as if you meant to work the next one flush against it, then take a turn around the tip of your finger before forming the ring. This will be surprisingly difficult, because your instincts have been trained to make you wrap the thread around all the fingers, not just one. Then when you overpower your instincts and wrap just one finger, your instincts say, "well, that's finished" and you will find yourself trying to tat without first wrapping the thread around your fingers. Be careful not to wrap your fingertip tightly, which would make it sore after only a few rings.
Now pull the first stitch up against the base of the previous ring, as though you were working a clover, except that you have to judge the stitch by eye instead of touch: the ring is not on the thread being knotted, and won't serve as a stop. Spaces made in this way will be quite large, and perfectly uniform.
At first, you will probably want to drop the loop off your fingertip and let it relax into a space just before making the join, but after you've made a few, you will find that you can ignore the loop even when it falls off your finger and sticks out under the ring. When you've finished the join and closed up the ring, everything straightens out where it belongs.
It's a good idea to slide the ring back and forth on the space and then give the ring a final tug. Because it is impossible to keep the space thread taut, it may have a kink inside the join. Straightening this kink sometimes loosens the ring a bit.
The most-portable work is the making of tats; all you need is one shuttle, and the thread is so fine that a full shuttle may last you for months. (Tats are individual rings which are made to decorate paper. See "How to Learn How Make Rings.")
There are so many variations possible in picot-length, picot number, picot spacing, and combinations that it takes a very long time to get bored with tat-making, and when you do, you can start using variegated thread.
If you are distracted and make a mistake, you can usually pretend that you did it on purpose, and when you can't, nothing is lost but a few inches of thread.
When you take the work out again after several weeks of not getting stuck anywhere, you don't have to remember what you were doing, and you don't have to peer at it to find out what stage of development your pattern is in.
You can work by touch in dim light.
When you return to home base, you can cut off the completed work and not have to carry it around with you.
About the only disadvantage of tat-making is that after a while you start needing a bigger box to hold your tangled heap of tats. Tat-making goes better if you know someone who decorates stationery.
Medallions are harder to make than tats, but easier to get rid of. If you stick to red or white thread, you can hang medallions on the Winter Solstice tree. Most metallic threads, alas, lose their glitter when tied into knots, but you can work beads into a medallion. (See Exercise 12.) Medallions can be made into mobiles, appliquéd onto clothing, worked into embroidery patterns as flower heads or abstract designs, and used as wheels in cutwork. Medallions made as entertainment are usually too small and too varied to make into all-lace objects, but a coarse medallion can serve as a glass doily -- glass doilies are an attractive alternative to coasters because you can scatter them around in places where your family is likely to set drinks down.
Advantages: You can finish a pattern before you get bored with it. Each medallion will suggest to you some variation for the next one.
Disadvantages: If you don't have to sit frequently, you can forget what plan you had in mind. When you forget, you'll need a good light and a minute to pay attention to your work before you can continue. Because there are always joins in medallions, you will need to carry a pin or use a shuttle that has a pick. Because you need to see what you are doing, you'll need #30 thread or coarser, so a shuttleful won't last you very long.
Edgings are good when you want to keep your hands busy without putting your mind into gear: when you travel and want to watch the scenery, when you talk with friends, or when you listen to lectures or attend meetings.
The best edging for no-thought work is a row of rings joined side-by-side by large, ornamental picots. No thought required, it takes only a glance to make a join, and a shuttle with a pick on it is all you need to carry. This edging can be cut with the loss of only one ring, should it happen that you find a use for it. This simple edging is discussed in the First Exercise.
An appliqué with similar virtues is a string of rings joined head to tail with the thread passed behind. (See Third Exercise.)
Any project-in-progress can be carried with you if you expect to have a comfortable and well-lit place to wait. It may be wise to carry a shuttle wound for tats as a back-up. Because tatting takes so little room, it's feasible to carry two or more projects to suit various occasions.
Bicycle-tire patch kits, cough drops, and candies often come in suitcase-shaped boxes that will hold a shuttle, a flat "ball" (see "Digression" in the Seventh Exercise), and some lace. A prescription pill bottle is good if you can find one that isn't "childproof".
If there is nothing else in the pocket, a pickless shuttle and a quantity of finished tats may be kept in it naked; if the work requires joins, your pick, pin, or crochet hook may get into trouble if not confined.
Some crochet hooks come with metal covers, and I've seen a picture of a crochet hook that would screw out of the handle and screw in again the other way, to protect the hook and keep it out of trouble. A section of one of the thin, stiff straws used for stirring drinks can be slipped over the end of a hook. (Carry a spare; if you drop it, you'll never see it again.)
I keep a crochet hook in a used-up felt-tip pen that I gutted and cleaned after cutting the point off with a paring knife.
Keep your eyes open and use your imagination: a tube meant to hang from a dog's collar with identification inside might be capable of hanging from your key ring with a tatting pin inside, and similar tubes are made for nitroglycerine tablets. Cases meant for medication, cigarettes, and other small objects might do for your tatting. If you carry your tatting in a briefcase or other bag instead of your pocket, a sandwich bag may suffice to keep your tatting together and protect it from lint, ink, and the like.
It is impossible to remove mistakes from thread smaller than #30, so you aren't going to want to use thread finer than #30 for anything more complicated than string-of-rings when you are trying to tat and do something else at the same time.
#10 thread is about as coarse as thread can be and still get a reasonable amount onto a reasonable shuttle, and you may have to rewind in the field. Because each knot consumes considerable thread, and because it requires both hands to stretch the ring after the first three or four doubles, #10 thread may consume more attention than you want to give to your tatting.
#20 makes a reasonably delicate lace and it is reasonably easy to untie a knot in #20 thread. You won't want to undo a whole ring, but remembering a picot one stitch late isn't a disaster.
If you have trouble keeping the work clean, you will avoid white and very light colors because dirt knotted in cannot ever be washed out. If you use dark colors, you must use only large picots for joining, so that you can find them in bad light. Light is nearly always bad, if not downright dim.
When you join into ornamental picots, a purling pin can double as a tatting pin. When you join into link picots, a hooked tatting pin is necessary. See "Tatting Pins" in this index.
Note: if you are making lace to wear, or to entertain yourself, it is better to train your eye than to use a gauge.
Any smooth object which happens to be the correct size can be pressed into service as a picot gauge: a sewing-machine needle, the handle of a seam ripper, a not-yet sharpened pencil, even the end of your finger. All slow the work and make it less pleasant, but are useful in achieving special effects.
>>..insert illustration of use of purling pin.
The open types of shuttles permit the use of coarser thread than can be wound on the traditional types, but they are harder to use; wait until you have a little experience before you try to tat with macramé cord and clothesline. (Note: Lady Hoar invented the first open shuttle for her blind mother; if you are reading the large-print version of this book, consider a Hoar shuttle.)
The removable-bobbin shuttles are wonderfully easy to wind; with a little ingenuity, you can even use a mechanical winder. I have, however, ordered you to buy a cheap shuttle, and a cheap removable-bobbin shuttle is intolerable: the thread unwinds when you don't want it to unwind (which leads to the painful and dirty habit of gripping the thread itself), the thread gets caught between the bobbin and the shuttle (which may stain the thread), and a cheap metal removable-bobbin shuttle will have bumps and snags and projections because welding and grinding are expensive.
The development of springy plastic has made it possible to make a usable removable-bobbin shuttle for a moderate price. I still don't recommend this style for beginners, because the detents wear off with use. It isn't bad to have to throw out a shuttle now and again, but you should wait until you can be sure that you aren't blaming the shuttle when you've been clumsy, or feeling clumsy when all that's wrong is that your shuttle is wearing out. If you do get this type of shuttle, also get a little epoxy putty and fill in the shoulder where the pick is joined, and file and sand it after it hardens; otherwise the shoulder will catch on the thread and make you think that tatting is difficult.
The boat shuttle may be molded all in one piece, or it may be made of two blades glued to a pedestal between them. An elongated pedestal will hold more thread than a round one. If made of a material that takes a polish, a boat shuttle will improve with use. It's more likely that your cheap shuttle will be made of a plastic that hasn't much spring, so that the tips separate with use. Such shuttles can be assigned to progressively coarser threads; you won't collect many before you are skilled enough to invest in a good shuttle. Note that the tips of even the best shuttle will be forced apart if you pull the thread too tight while winding, if you wind a bulging wad of thread, or if you force the tips to spread for a thread larger than the thread that the shuttle was designed for.
Your cheap shuttle may have sprue-stubs where the plastic was run into the mold. If so, file them off with an emery board, using the coarse side to remove the stub and the fine side to smooth the scar. File cautiously; the soft plastic wears away quickly. Then rub the shuttle on coarse cloth with a little padding underneath, to smooth the file-marks and take a bit of the snag out of any raised lettering and mold marks. (If you are wearing jeans, polish it on the side of your leg.)
Any of the three kinds of shuttle may be made with or without a pick. A pick is a short pin or hook on the leading point of the shuttle, and is used for making joins. When buying a cheap shuttle, get one without a pick if you have a choice, because it is expensive to attach a pick without creating bumps and snags. A pick that is molded in one piece with one of the shuttle blades is harmless, but likely also to be useless, because cheap plastic won't hold a point. The soft plastic can, however, be re-sharpened with a paring knife and then rubbed smooth on denim or other coarse cloth. I suggest sharpening it by carving a slight indentation at one side of the point, where the thread lies when being pulled through the picot. Make it concave, rather than hooked, because a hook will break at the throat.
A fourth type of shuttle is no shuttle at all: just wind the thread into a skein, wrap its tail around one end, secure it with a couple of half hitches, and put a half hitch of the working thread around the other end. The working end is the end inside the skein. A skein pulls smoothly from the inside, but has to be put on a holder to unwind from the outside. I once used this style of "shuttle" to make a hot mat of mason's line.
See also "Winding a Shuttle" in this index.
If stout lace is made entirely of vegetable fiber, usually cotton or linen, and if it is undyed, or if the dye is fast to boiling, a quick and easy way to stiffen it is to use cornstarch. Mix one tablespoon of cornstarch with one pint of water. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Drop the dry lace into the boiling solution, fish it out with tongs or chopsticks, and lay it on a white towel to cool. There are a number of ways to proceed from here:
1.) For a flat, glossy finish, plaster the piece on a mirror, window, or the enameled side of the fridge, with the right side next to the smooth surface. For an embossed, matte finish, put the wrong side next to the smooth surface. Pat with a towel to make it stick and to remove excess starch; peel off when thoroughly dry.
2.) Mold it to the desired shape and allow it to dry. It can be smoothed over a form, stretched on a board by a pin through each picot, or placed between layers of much-washed muslin under a flat weight.
3.) Let it get about half dry and then iron it. Iron through a cloth! Leave it on the ironing board to cool and finish drying.
When the starch solution is cool, you can use it for synthetic and dyed threads, but you may have to dilute it to make it thin enough to soak in, and cold water soaks more slowly than hot water does; you will have to hold the lace under until it gets wet, sloshing it around for even penetration.
If you know how to starch laundry, you're a bit shocked at my advice to put the lace into the starch dry. Laundry has to be wet to be starched evenly because fabric scavenges starch out of the water: if the fabric is dry, the first parts to touch the starch encounter a stronger solution than the parts behind them. However, small bits in a comparatively large volume meet fairly uniform conditions, so you can put dry lace into starch. (I assume that you haven't had time to tat a wedding dress or a pair of curtains.)
Diluted white glue is often recommended for stiffening needlework; bear in mind that white glue does not wash out. Cornstarch not only washes out easily, it carries the dirt with it. If you buy a proprietary fabric stiffener, note whether or not it can be washed out if the ornament gets dirty. It should either come out clean or stay firmly in place while you scrub with a horsehair brush. Test it on a sample of the thread you are using before you slosh it over weeks of work; things stick more firmly to some things than to others.
The hot starch solution can be made stronger, but you can't go very far in that direction before the solution is too thick even when boiling. A syrup of white sugar made in the same manner can make your lace as stiff as you please. A solution weak enough to be made cold will make your lace board stiff, and a hot solution can impart a glass-like hardness. (Use a candy thermometer to make sure the syrup is no hotter than boiling water when you use it.) The lace will become sticky if exposed to high humidity, however, and nasty things can happen if you don't wash the sugar out before storing the lace in the attic.
All non-toxic stiffeners should be washed out before prolonged storage, lest they attract silverfish. Toxic stiffeners may react chemically with the fiber, so they, too, should be washed out if they weren't made for museum work.
Crochet hooks that aren't good for crochet are even worse for tatting, because the heads are too thick to force through small picots, and because the ill-shaped cavity of the hook tends to catch only part of the thread. Bite the bullet and buy an imported hook even if you mean to saw its handle off.
When the joining picots are large, a dressmaker's straight pin will work, but frequent use of a hard-to-hold straight pin will make your fingers hurt. A straight pin is more likely to get lost or in trouble than a crochet hook is, but also more likely to be lying about when you happen to need one. If you use the flat ball suggested in the seventh exercise, wind around two thin cards, and slip the pin between them. A pin can also be stuck into the hollow of a ball wound on a cardboard spool.
If you use the pointed end, rather than hooking the thread with the head of the pin, a corsage pin is easier to hold than a straight pin, and almost as easy to keep handy.
Tapestry needles, though inconveniently short, are easy to keep handy because they can be tethered by a string through the eye. Tapestry needles also make good purling pins. (See "Purling Pin," this index.) You may be able to buy a long tapestry needle under various names such as "weaving needle."
A hard thread that stays round under pressure makes the best-looking knots. You also want the smoothest surface you can find; cable cord does make lovely knots, but it takes two men and a boy to pull it through a ring.
Sometimes a thread that's labeled "tatting thread" isn't at all suited to tatting; so-called "tatting thread" may have a soft, fuzzy surface that is so hard to pull through the rings that the thread snaps. Perhaps tatting has been out of fashion for so long that the thread has been reformulated to please embroiderers and crocheters, or maybe it's just cheap. The threads I found in my grandmother's sewing basket are much smoother and stronger than threads sold with the same labels today. I attribute that to inflation, and to widespread ignorance and apathy concerning the fine points of fibers. Try all the available brands of tatting cotton; some are good, and sometimes you will be willing to put up with the others for the sake of the colors. Drawing a fuzzy thread lightly over a chunk of beeswax might stick the fuzz down and make it easier to work with. Don't make anything ambitious out of waxed thread without first making a small medallion and washing it.
Crochet cotton is often good. Some kinds are better for tatting than they are for crochet.
DMC's Cordonnet is hard and smooth, and comes in almost any size you could want, but, alas, in only two colors. I found a ball of gray Cordonnet in a clearance basket, so it must have once been available in colors other than white and ecru.
Coats and Clark's Speed-Cro-Sheen and Knit-Cro-Sheen are cheap, readily available, come in many colors, and are hard enough for tatting. They aren't as sleek as six-cord Cordonnet, but four cords make an adequately-smooth surface, and Speed-Cro-Sheen is a nearly ideal size for the first step in learning; it's about as coarse a thread as you can tat without distorting your technique. Lily makes a similar thread called "Double Quick".
Wool threads are not suitable for tatting. They are too elastic, too fuzzy, and too soft. "Woolen" yarns are spun with the fibers fed crosswise or every which way, to make them light, soft, fluffy, and warm. "Worsted" yarns are spun with the fibers parallel to the yarn; they are denser, smoother, and stronger than woolen yarns. Some worsted yarns are springy and have a silken sheen. Embroidery wool is usually worsted, and will stand up to being pulled through knots better than knitting wool can. "Semi-worsted" yarns, spun from folded fibers, are preferred by many knitters, but tatters should regard them as neither fish nor fowl. Since semi-worsteds are hand spun, it's wasteful to use a semi-worsted where a worsted would work better.
Hand-spun thread in general is a bad idea for tatting, unless you can't get what you want without having it made to order.* Uniformity is the machine's strong point, and uniform thread is what you need for tatting; it's no coincidence that the spinning wheel was invented before tatting was.** Talented and experienced hand spinners can make good tatting thread, but it is too expensive to experiment with.
Silk: the big deal about silk is that it's soft, which makes it wasteful to use it for tatting. When you are skillful, you may want to try tatting size A sewing silk; the knots will obscure the silken sheen, but no fiber makes a more delicate lace. Use only reeled silk for tatting. Knitted spun silk is wonderful, but tatted spun silk is less luxurious than fibers that cost much less.
Synthetic threads are not for the beginner. If the filaments are chopped into staple and spun, the thread will be fuzzy and weak. The fuzz makes the thread hard to pull through knots, and the weak thread may not withstand the extra force. If the thread is made of unchopped filaments the way reeled silk is made, the synthetic will be smooth and strong, and it will have a lovely sheen, but it will also tend to untie itself. Braided synthetic filaments stay tied without heat setting, but
come only in sizes too large for comfortable work. If you want to try synthetics, start with rayon, a semi-synthetic, and save nylon and kevlar for last. (Note: no matter what it says on the package, rayon won't wash. Use it for pictures under glass and other don't-touch items.)
* For example, automatic machines cannot handle the very long fibers needed to make the finest linen thread.
** The earliest known tatting book is a second edition printed in 1843. Tatting as we know it was developed by Mlle. Eleonore Riego de la BranchardiŠre between 1846 and 1868. Her work may have been based on work done earlier in Italy, but is more likely to be "unvention." Little record of the Italian work survives. Since the lives of sailors depend on knots, it is presumed that they helped to develop and spread the art of shuttle knotting.
The numbers refer to the thickness of the yarns of which threads are made. The plys of thread are called "yarns." The "yarns" of which thread is made resemble the "yarns" used for knitting only slightly more than they resemble the "yarns" spun by old men sitting around a fire. Most knitting yarns are made of two or more yarns. Once I survive this section, I'm never going to mention yarns again.
The full name of a plant-fiber thread size is the size of the thread's yarns written as a fraction over the number of yarns -- 20/3 thread is made of three #20 size yarns. (Wool uses the reverse fraction: ply over yarn size.) Threads whose fractions reduce to the same number will be approximately the same thickness: if you use twice as many yarns, and make them half as thick, you'll get a thread about the same size as before.
All sewing thread used to be three-ply thread; since the bottom part of the fraction was always the same, it was the custom to leave it off. To this day, sewing thread is labeled by the size of the cotton yarns it would take three of to make a thread of that thickness, so a six-cord #60 cotton sewing thread is actually 120/6, which equals 60/3. Six-cord sewing threads are stronger than three-cord threads, but some three-cord threads are still made for embroidery and basting. Be careful not to buy basting thread to tat with.
Many crochet cottons are labeled as if they were six-ply threads, so if you double the number of a crochet cotton, you will have the number it would have if it were sold for sewing thread. The best crochet threads have six yarns or even more, but many perfectly satisfactory threads have as few as three. The quality and length of fiber, and the care taken in manufacturing, are more important than the number of plies.
Don't buy un-mercerized cotton thread for tatting; mercerization makes cotton both smoother and stronger.
Linen threads usually have the entire fraction marked on them, since there has never been a standard number of plies. Most of the linen threads available are meant for bobbin lace, and are too soft for tatting. If you can find a smooth, hard linen thread, you are sure to love it. It will be too expensive to learn on. Linen sewing thread is sold for some crafts; it may have a coating that makes it stiff and awkward. Don't make a substantial project of linen sewing thread until after you have washed a small one; the character of the thread may change drastically when the coating is washed off.
Twine is marked in "pounds test." These pounds measure force, not weight. "Pounds test" indicates the strength of the twine without reference to size, but if two twines are made of the same fiber, it's reasonable to expect the stronger twine to be thicker.
Hemp twine is again available, though hard to find, and is easier on the fingers than jute twine. Hemp is much like linen, except that the fibers are longer. It was traditionally made into coarse fabric and rope; the word "canvas" comes from an old word for hemp.
If you want to tat a fuzzy or rough-surfaced twine, work entirely in mock rings. If you still can't work neatly and easily, use a smoother twine as your shuttle thread.
Cotton mason's line (chalk line, cable cord) makes excellent hot mats, but it requires great strength in your hands to work it.
See End Disposal, this index.
The dye of the thread might not be fast, or the fiber might not stand up to washing or dry cleaning. A washable thread isn't necessarily safe at the cleaners. Read the labels, and try out any new thread on unimportant projects. Before using a thread to make an appliqué, sew a sample to white cloth and wash it to see whether it bleeds.
Rayon threads are glorious to work with, but become dull when washed. If you want the look of silk, use silk. You can still find size D silk, also known as "buttonhole twist," if you hunt. Silk is naturally washable; any silk marked "dry clean only" has been badly handled, or the dye isn't fast.
Silk is more likely than other fibers to be colored with fugitive dyes. Silk shrinks enormously the first time it gets wet; if you aren't sure of your silk thread, wind it into long hanks, plunge the hanks into water, and lay them on towels to dry. Keep cats and small children out of the room.
A small medallion might get lost among the rest of the load, or it might slosh over the top of the tub and get pumped out with the lint. You can use a lingerie bag, or drop small things into a pillowcase and baste it closed.
Some things can get tangled when sloshed around. Baste them to fabric or hand-wash. (Very fine thread also requires hand washing.)
To hand-wash, scrub the lace with a soft brush such as a complexion brush or a mushroom brush, rinse in many, many changes of water to make up for not wringing it, blot it on a towel, and swear to make something more cohesive next time.
The traditional method of washing fine lace is to baste it to a strip of flannel, wrap the cloth around a bottle, set the bottle in a pan of cold soapy water (real soap, of course) and bring the water to a boil. That will definitely remove anything capable of coming out, including most traditional dyes and many modern dyes. Rinsing will be a pain, probably involving another boiling bath, and I wonder about the effect of the heat on the bottle.
Small pieces of lace can be washed in boiling water without the bottle or, if they are cohesive, without the basting. Boiling real soap is the ultimate cleaner, but try other methods on stains first, because anything that boiling water doesn't take out will be permanently set. There is also the possibility that damaged fibers will be cleaned out of the fabric, and not all fibers can take heat.
When you tat, you should regard anything that rubs off your fingers and gets knotted into the lace as a permanent part of the work, for such stains do not wash out, and bleach is worse than useless. It is worth a try, however, to wash spoiled work, then put it into a pot of soap and cold water (real soap: modern detergents are made to work at lower temperatures) and bring the water to a good, rolling boil. (Or only to a good simmer, if there is danger of tangling.) Rubbing a bar of wet soap over the lace before you immerse it in the soapy water may help. Simmer a minute or up to ten minutes, then rinse thoroughly in hot tap water. Stainless-steel tongs are a big help, but a slotted spoon will do.
A less-drastic cleaning: pour liquid detergent on the stain, allow to soak a minute, then wash in cold water in your usual way.
Small things can be washed and rinsed by shaking them in a mayonnaise jar. If you let them sit ten minutes, the detergent will do most of the work.
Tatting usually requires pressing after washing, but an appliqué that has been sewn to a stout no-iron fabric by every picot will block itself. A little extra labor in the sewing can save a lot of labor in the washing.
Never let an iron touch lace directly. Use a dry cloth if the lace is wet, and a damp cloth if the lace is dry. Gently stretch all picots before pressing, and again while the lace is steaming.
The traditional method is to make a fat butterfly by winding thread or yarn in a figure eight over two fingers of your off hand. Which two fingers and how far apart you hold them depends on the size of the yarn; each lobe of the eight should be fairly round, so that it forms a sphere when you fold it in half. In thread, you may have to settle for a disk.
It takes more practice to do it in thread than in yarn, and #10 thread may be the finest that it is practical to wind in this way.
While winding the figure eight, you hold down the end of thread or yarn with a finger or thumb. When the figure eight is about as fat as you can make it, fold it in half with the end of the thread feeding out from the middle.
Yarn and thread methods diverge from here. It is very important to avoid stretching yarn, so you wind over the two fingers holding the ball as well as the ball, so that you get a skein just barely tight enough to keep the figure eight from unfolding. As the ball grows, you use more fingers. In coarse yarn you'll end up balancing the ball on your palm while you drape yarn around both hand and ball. Each successive skein should be just barely tight enough to avoid falling off, and it's all right to depend on the following skein to prevent it from doing so. I like to make each skein near-miss the hole from which the thread emerges, missing by more and more until I wrap the equator, then go back to the pole to start over. Any winding pattern that averages more-or-less round will do -- as long as you don't block the exit.
If you pick up and put down your yarn countless times before it's used up, it's a good idea to put the ball into some sort of net covering to keep the outside skeins from getting messy. Otherwise, it may be necessary to re-wind the ball when it's three-fourths gone. Crochet is the easiest way to make a mesh bag, but directions for a tatted bag are given under "mignonette" in this index.
Thread doesn't stretch, so your only worry about tightness is that you might distort the inner skeins and make them tangle. You pull the thread tight, but not too tight. You want to make a firm ball that can hold its shape after you pull out its center, but you must be careful not to squash the butterfly. This becomes easier after a few layers have been wound into a stiff casing. To begin, pinch the folded figure eight between thumb and finger at the point where the thread emerges, then wind a skein of thread around the wad of thread, just tight enough that it holds its shape. It may dent the butterfly slightly, but not much. Wind the first skein thick enough to be a little stiff, so that the skeins that follow can fit neatly against the previous layers without distorting them.
>>.. Illustration: how to wind a center-pull ball of thread
>>..illo of thread coming out of shuttle
thread should emerge from the left side at the top. To put it another way, the thread should come out at the end between your thumb and forefinger, and on the side away from your hand. (NOTE: the purpose of being fussy about which way the thread comes out is to keep it from getting in your way. If you are using someone else's tatting method, use his shuttle-winding method.)
If you use a pickless shuttle, it can be wound in either direction, because the shuttle can be turned over. A shuttle with a pick must be held with the pick up, and if the pick is on one blade, the blade with the pick must be on the side toward you. (i.e., your thumb is on the blade that carries the pick.) When the shuttle is closed-end with the pick in the middle, it, too, can be turned over to bring the thread to the proper side, unless the pick is hooked. Then the hook must face left (away from your hand) to keep it from catching in the work.
If you have trouble figuring out how to hold a shuttle: if nothing catches on anything, you're holding it right. If something catches, look to see what's doing it, and turn it away from the scene of action. The traditional shuttle could be turned any which way, because both ends were pointed and both sides were smooth. This allowed finer regulation of thread length, because you could release half a turn of thread at a time; many modern shuttles force you to release a full turn in order to keep the pointed end forward.)
The pedestal should have a hole in it. If so, tie the thread through the hole. Don't use a tight, burglar-securing knot; you're going to have to get this thread off the shuttle eventually. Just pass the thread through the hole, wrap the tail around the main line once or twice, and wind the tail and the main line together until you lose your grip on the tail. If the end of the tail insists on flapping around, try to catch it under the turn being made each time that side of the shuttle comes up; sooner or later, it will lie down quietly.
Rotate the shuttle, bringing the thread down between the two blades. Force it between them with a little snap. If it is difficult to force the thread between the blades, it is too coarse for the shuttle and will spring the blades. If there is no resistance at all, the shuttle is too coarse for the thread, and will unwind when you drop the shuttle or try to dangle it to remove excess twist. (I'd like for some mathematician to explain to me how a thread can get twisted when neither end rotates, but it happens all the time.)
Switch ends and repeat countless times. After a while you can do this by touch while thinking about something else. Pull the thread tight enough to be neat, and tight enough that the thread won't cut into a fluffy mass when you pull on the shuttle to close a ring -- but if you get carried away, you can build up pressure inside and spring the blades. (If you don't overfill the shuttle, it takes a little grunting to ruin it.)
Stop winding when you reach the edges of the blades; thread that protrudes can get dirty, it can fray, and it constantly gets in your way. Also, thread that intrudes into the part of the shuttle that tapers toward the ends can force the blades apart when tension is put on the thread.
It is rare for the two-blade shuttle to lack a hole; if yours does, perhaps you can drill one with a fine auger and blunt the sharp edges with a reamer. Otherwise, see the lassoing instructions given for the bobbin shuttle. (Some large handmade shuttles lack holes because the pedestal is long enough in proportion to its thickness to hold by friction alone, and because you can get a finger inside to hold the end of the thread until you get a couple of turns over it. If you buy a raw-wood shuttle, wax the outside, but don't wax the pedestal -- it isn't supposed to be slick.)
The makers of shuttle bobbins seem to have taken their pattern from sewing-machine bobbins; at any rate, the hole is nearly always in one side of the bobbin instead of through the core. A hole in this position isn't much use during hand winding. You can pass a thread through such a hole, somehow or the other hold the end until you've wound wind enough turns to hold by friction, and trim it close after the bobbin is wound. Then when the bobbin is a few turns from empty, all the thread unwinds at once. You can prevent the unwanted unwinding by tying the thread to the side of the bobbin, but then you've got thread outside your bobbin. I prefer to lasso the bobbin. First I double the end of the thread and turn the loop down, then fold the
>>..illo of lassoing bobbin here
sides of the loop back to make a noose. This is the toggle knot described in "Illustrations of Knots," but instead of putting a safety pin into the loop, I lasso the core of the bobbin with it. Then I pull it tight, and if the core is slightly rough, as the core of a tatting bobbin ought to be, it will hold while I wind it. If the core is smooth, I wind tightly and let it slip while I'm winding; after a while friction tightens the thread enough to hold. (A discreet finger on the first few turns slows them enough for the winding to gain on the slipping.)
Once you have the bobbin started, look at the shuttle. Most of the cheaper bobbin shuttles have one end oddly square. If you put the bobbin on the squared-off end, you will usually find that it fits tightly and you can use the shuttle for a handle while you are winding the bobbin.
If a bobbin shuttle has the blades welded together and ground smooth, both ends will be alike, so that the shuttle can be used with either end first. (The makers of welded shuttles assumed that people who spent that kind of money on shuttles had bobbin-winders.) I've never seen a new shuttle of the welded style, but the population of the world is large enough to make it plausible that somebody somewhere makes them, and they do turn up in antique stores.
Shuttle winders are rare, but if you have a bobbin winder meant for pillow lace, see whether it will turn a stick small enough to hold a shuttle bobbin. A shim of folded paper will keep the bobbin from slipping on the stick. You can chuck a short piece of dowel into a variable-speed drill or a hand drill to make a bobbin winder.
Most bobbins can be inserted with either end up, so wind in the more convenient direction, then turn the bobbin so that the thread comes off the top to the left and put it back into the shuttle.
A bobbin has no spring, so you can't damage it by winding it too full or too tightly, but if a bobbin is overfilled, the thread can spill out, wedge into the bobbin bearing, get rust stains, and generally make trouble.
A two-blade shuttle with an oblong pedestal holds more thread than a bobbin shuttle of the same size, because the core of a bobbin is always round: the shape with the smallest circumference for its area.