Questions come up all the time in the tatting groups about picots. It can be very confusing to the newcomer as to the best way to interpret patterns - how long do you make the picot, how do you make them all the same length, does it matter if they are a little uneven, what do the abbreviations mean - even reading the abbreviation list in the pattern book may confuse further because the reader will not always understand the particular technique involved. I once went through my books and the Web collecting picot techniques and gave up after I reached 50!

Let's start at the very beginning. I can remember way back in the 1970s when I learned, tatting from the longhand traditional style English patterns provided by Coats. These instructions were cryptic and often took it for granted that certain things would be understood. The pattern for a ring would read: 3 DS, 5 P sep by 3 DS, 3 DS, cl. R, RW. I did not at that time understand that the picot counted only as the loop of thread and did not include any of the double stitches, and for quite a long time each picot was counted as one double stitch, then make the three double stitches in the pattern. This did not matter with the fine threads that were at that time my preference, but I gradually realised that this could make the rings significantly bigger than it should be if there were a lot of picots in it and a heavy thread was being used.

Next those abbreviations. P is no problem - obviously a picot - but what about lp and sp? Long Picot and Small Picot and I have even seen vsp - Very Small Picot - in some patterns recently. However very often in the old patterns it is not stated how long the picots should be. Reigo de la Branchardiere, the 19th century pioneer, used special pins to measure her picots and wound the thread round the pin so many times for the gauge but so often no measurement at all is given.

It's necessary first of all to look at the pattern illustration and study it carefully. Are the picots all the same length? Are they long and lacy, showing long loops between the joined rings and chains or are the joins tight with the joining picots barely visible? If you try to make a doily which has long lacy loops between each join and make it with tiny barely visible picots you may end up with a ruffled mess that will never lie flat. In time you will be able to make picots that are more or less the same length just by eye and without using a gauge and in most traditional patterns that is all that is needed - and the long picots and tiny picots can be gauged by the feel of the loop between the finger and thumb before the double stitch is drawn up. However a tatting gauge can be invaluable in ensuring even smooth lines of picots - if you are holding the gauge parallel to the line of stitches it will need to be double the length of the picot given in the pattern in order for the picots to be the correct length. If the gauge is held perpendicular (at right angles) to the double stitches then it can be the same width as the length of the picot - and in the latter case you don't need to remove the gauge for each measured picot, just work the line of picots over the gauge and remove it when the ring is ready to be drawn up or the chain ready to be shaped.

The next stage in the evolution of the tatting pattern was the development of symbols. In the Danish book Tatting Patterns and Designs by Gun Blomqvist and Elwy Persson, a minus sign was used to indicate a picot and a plus sign to indicate a join. Things became very cryptic indeed and quite often the instruction 8 x 3 was used to indicate 8 groups of three double stitches - in other words 3 DS, 7 P separated by 3 DS, 3 DS! Studying the pattern illustration closely became even more important with these patterns because some of the two shuttle work was very complex - but for the most part the instructions were extremely clear and accurate and in only one doily did I encounter problems. I made nearly every piece in that book and am indebted to these authors for many of the two shuttle techniques I use to this day.

The next development was the use of multiple dashes to indicate length of a picot. In this case the single dash was used to indicate a picot the height of the double stitches, two dashes meant a long picot double the height of the double stitches and three dashes meant a long picot three times the height of the double stitch.

Finally the development of the diagrammatical pattern added some new clarity to the language of pattern writing. In the diagrammatical patterns picots will be indicated by little loops or by straight lines and numbers next to the ring or chain will indicate the number of double stitches to work.