Making up an item following a set of instructions in a book can be easy but it can also be fraught with difficulties. There are many different reasons for something not working out as shown in the illustration. Reason number 1 is that up until about 1990 most writers worked in isolation. Often you met another tatter about once every ten years and it was impossible to find test workers. Elgiva Nicholls did have a pattern tester, but many other writers didn't and since we are all human errors crept in. In addition we ourselves make mistakes and sometimes don't understand that a certain technique is used to create the finished piece. As a result it's essential to have a clear photograph of any piece you are making and to study it carefully if things go awry.

Before you begin, look carefully at the sample as far as you can, and read the instructions. Bear in mind that some tatting books written around 1900-1930 included two shuttle work, but between about 1945 and 1985 most workers used either a single shuttle to create ring only work (which is also often known as mignonette), or a shuttle and ball thread.

You will also sometimes find that the expression "second shuttle" does not actually mean a second shuttle but a chain. This comes from the mid 19th century workers who would work rings only with the shuttle, and then encapsulate the thread between the rings with double stitches (because the true chain was published for the first time in the early 1860s and it took time to spread and become well known). Unfortunately the use of the term "second shuttle" to mean "to make a chain" continued right into the 20th century - and the repeated reprint of some patterns caused it to continue to be used right through to around 1970! This overlapped with the use of the second shuttle as we understand it and can cause confusion. Careful study of the pattern and the terms used in the abbreviations (if given) will clarify which variation of the term is being used. And this is just one example of tatting terms changing over the years, not to mention the fact that a number of writers in the 1990s redeveloped tatting terms, some of which were picked up and are still in use today.

Even the pros can be tripped up with this - there was one famous occasion quite recently when someone asked about the interpretation of a pattern from 1917. The tatting term "SR" was at that time used to mean Small Ring - and I completely forgot this as nowadays it is usually used to mean Split Ring! SR could not have meant split ring in this particular pattern as Ann Orr didn't invent it until the 1930s.

Where the numeric notation is in use, writers rarely state when to reverse work and when not to, and even fewer state where to start in the pattern. Again careful study of the written instructions and photograph, and to a certain degree experience will help here.

Other things to study include the lengths of picots used at different points in the pattern - if the picots are quite long in the outer rows of a doily, for example, this may affect whether or not it will bowl in and not lie flat. You also need to watch chain tension and make sure your chains lie in the same way as those of the designer. Sometimes a piece not lying flat will be caused by inaccurate stitch counts or the fact that nowadays we would add stitches to the chain instead of keeping the double stitch count between picots the same. It all needs to be taken into account.

Having said all this, it may seem impossible to recreate patterns from books. It isn't but if you run into difficulties these are just some of the things you might like to consider. And do remember that blocking saves a lot of pieces. Quite often badly frilled or bowled doilies and other items will lie beautifully flat once pressed, and you only need to look at some of the older patterns to see how the shapes of rings and chains have been pulled out and into shapes by the blocking which would be impossible to achieve with normal tatting techniques. This distortion usually adds character to the piece though it can be ugly. It's up to you to study the designer's work to see how different effects have been achieved and how the final piece has been worked.