For those who haven’t yet enjoyed Tatting Collage by Lindsay Rogers, I highly suggest that you add this wonderful item to your tatting book collection.

Ms Rogers opens the book with self-introduction, explaining how she first learned to tat around the age of eight or nine, during WWII and was taught by a family friend; though, her father is given credit for her creativity. She explains how portable she finds tatting to be and how inquisitive onlookers are once they discover the delicate work being done with some thread and a small shuttle.

Next Lindsay goes into explaining some techniques and tools of the trade. I found the technique of drawing up a loop, from the ball thread, and giving it a couple of twists before wrapping the loop back around the ball to be extremely helpful at keeping the ball thread from unwinding and rolling down my lap and across the floor for the doggies to find and play with. Definitely a great way to keep control of your ball of thread. Another thing, that I found to be helpful, especially for newbies, was the well-drawn out methods of joins, thread tension and picot gauges.

At a quick glance, I’m thrilled with the simplicity of Ms Roger’s book. As long as a tatter knows how to do half stitches (hitches; as Ms Rogers refers to them), double stitches, picots, form rings and chains (basically, how to start tatting), then this book is for you. I immediately fell in love with the style in which Lindsay starts the book with simple little items to be tatted. Tatting Collage prints not only the picture of the finished item, but also the graph pattern as well as the printed instructions.

Starting the patterns with simple, yet elegant, items; such as ducks, grass, flowers, butterflies…and the list goes on. Each pattern very simple to follow and only takes just a short time to create. Then, Ms Rogers adds to these wonderful ‘beginnings’ and shows how you can use these patterns to design cards, bookmarks, and again the list goes on and is only limited by the imagination.

Ms Rogers completes her Tatting Collage by giving the reader some tatted edging patterns and a wonderful list of ‘recommended reading’ material. One of which, The Complete Book of Tatting, by Rebecca Jones, is a favored tatting reference book which explains tatting technique in detail.