The techniques you have already learned will suffice to make anything that can be made of lace, and in an infinite variety of patterns, but most single-shuttle patterns look better in fine thread than in the coarse thread we are using for practice. I shall leave off exploring the possibilities of shuttle-alone designs, and introduce those that can be made with shuttle and ball.
For practice, your ball thread should match your shuttle thread in size and quality, but contrast with it in color. I like red and white for experimenting. Color contrast is less important in pieces that you intend to use or throw away than in pieces that you intend to keep for reference.
First, some preliminary discussion of the ball:
You can work directly off the ball of thread as purchased. If you always sit in the same chair to work, and if you use coarse thread, a useful trick is to tie a loop of string through the holes of a shirt button. Pass the loop of string from inside to outside through a stiletto hole punched in the label of the thread, and use the loop to hang the ball above your working area. The slightest tension will feed more thread, so you don't have to pay attention to unwinding thread, and you don't have to worry about corralling the ball and keeping it clean. If the room contains cats or small children, either arrange the ball so that it can easily be taken down between sessions, or provide yourself with a small bag in which to hang your shuttle and work beside the ball.
Fine thread, which doesn't have to be pulled off the ball very often, is sometimes kept in a small bag hung from the left wrist. Such a bag would be a good first project when you begin to design lace.
If the thread comes in a skein, or if the ball is too large to carry with you, you can hand-wind a small ball. If the ball is wound to pull from the center (see "Winding Center-Pull Balls" in the Encyclopedic Index), it will unwind more smoothly than one to be unwound from the outside. However, the center-pull trick doesn't work as well with thread as it does with yarn, and balls are uncompromisingly spherical. I prefer to wind the thread onto a small piece of card. This makes a flat "ball" that fits into the cough-drop box I carry my tatting in, and passing the thread through a slit near one corner of the card keeps it from unwinding when I dangle the ball to let the thread untwist or un-unravel.
The traditional way to carry the second thread is to wind it onto a second shuttle. (For this reason, many old pattern books list shuttle-and-ball patterns among the two-shuttle patterns.) The shuttle protects the thread from dirt and wear, and gives you the option of changing your mind and making a two-shuttle pattern. The shuttle is harder to wind than a card, and limits the amount of thread that can be wound. There are awkwardly-large shuttles that hold miles of thread, but I'd rather carry the original ball than an oversized shuttle. A plastic bag can keep the thread clean in your pocket.
The easiest way to add chains to your designs is to substitute them for the naked threads in the single-shuttle designs you have already learned.
Consider the first edging we studied: a row of rings side-by-side. Connect them with chains instead of bare threads. Work all the rings on the wrong side, and work all the chains on the right side.
One simple scroll edging can be made by:
R: 4-4-4-4 Reverse work
C: 4-4 Reverse work
R: 4+4-4-4 Reverse work
C: 4-4 Reverse work
R: 4+4-4-4 Reverse work
C: 4-4 Reverse work
R: 4+4-4-4 Reverse work
C: 4-4 Reverse work
And so on until you have enough edging or start climbing the walls.
This edging can be varied without so much as fiddling with the picots, because either the chains or the rings can be sewn to the hem. You can make a two-row edging by joining rings to rings, chains to chains, or rings to chains.
You can make rings of different sizes, make chains of different lengths (chains that are too long or too short will cause the edging to curve), and substitute clovers for the rings.
To try the scroll without committing yourself to making yards of edging, curl it up as you did when making the preliminary exercise for the simple wheel that we studied in the fourth exercise. The bare threads left in the fourth exercise were made longer than the corresponding threads in the simple edging to allow for the curve. For the same reason, the chains in our practice medallion will be twice as long as the chains in the edging just described. Begin, as you began the fourth exercise, by making a ring with an elongated picot at its tip:
R: 4-4---4-4 (work all rings on the wrong side)
The three hyphens in the middle of this mnemonic mean that that picot is to be extra long -- in this case, long enough to hold six joins. Reverse work and, on the right side, make a sixteen-stitch chain:
C: 4--4--4--4 Reverse work
R: 4+4+4-4 Reverse work (join to previous ring and to long
picot of first ring)
Continue alternating rings and chains until there are five rings and five chains. Join the sixth ring to the first ring, make one more chain, then tie the end of the shuttle thread to the beginning of the shuttle thread in a square knot, and tie the ball thread to the ball thread in a square knot.
Notice that I didn't say anything about tying the ball thread and shuttle thread together before you start, as many writers do. The ring that is on the shuttle thread is ample to prevent the chain stitches from sliding off. Just pick up the ball thread and start working.
When you were learning to chain, you didn't tie the threads together, you left them separate so that you could pull the shuttle thread out of the knots and straighten the threads to practice some more. Unsecured threads won't suddenly start bothering you just because you've mastered the basic stitch. If you start a piece with a chain, and fear that a burst of enthusiasm might pull the shuttle thread out, tie it in a toggle knot to a safety pin. A toggle knot (see Illustrations of Knots) is the same old larks-head that we have been calling a double stitch. When the pin -- the "toggle" -- is removed, the knot ceases to exist.
If you need perfectly straight chains, Elgiva Nicholls describes three and uses another in Tatting Technique and History.
Two are described in Nicholls' section "Pearl and Raised Tatting". Pearl tatting is a method of working three threads into a symmetrical chain which can have picots on both sides. Raised tatting uses four threads, and produces a straight chain with an extra line of picots on one side. I have never felt the urge to use five threads and put two lines of picots on both sides.
For a less-advanced way to produce a straight line, consider her "node stitch," which consists of two plains followed by two purls (or the other way around). Node stitch has an interesting zig-zag texture, like minute rickrack. It is mentioned in the Encyclopedic Index to this book.
Nicholls also uses the Josephine chain (see Glossary), but does not give it a name.
But for the moment, let us accept that tatting consists of curves, and consider how to take advantage of the tendency.
The simple scroll medallion can be varied in many ways: make more or fewer rings, make the rings smaller or larger or alternately small and large, make the chains longer or shorter, make the picots of various sizes and in various places.
Substituting clovers for the rings causes a striking increase in visual complexity; if the middle rings are long and are squashed into narrow ovals, you will scarcely recognize it as the same medallion.
You may want to explore a few of these possibilities before proceeding to the next exercise. This medallion is easy to experiment with because you don't commit yourself to a precise number of repeats beforehand. If the pattern you have chosen doesn't curve as much as you thought it would, you can squeeze in extra rings until the outer edge is long enough to meet. If it curves more than you thought it would and the chains won't squeeze, you can join it sooner than you had planned.
You can also take a hint from the classic wheel, and work the scroll around a central ring instead of a central picot -- or work it around any object that has holes or loops around the edge. If you imagine working the scroll around objects that gradually increase in size from a rhinestone to a doily, you will see it evolve from a medallion back into an edging.
On to Exercise Eight:
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