If you are enjoying a holiday at this time, you may have time to do some downloading of tatting books which are free online. Here is a list of free books online from BellaOnline.com: http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/3137.asp. One great site to find tatting books for free downloads is Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a public domain archive in which many tatting books are housed. Overall PG offers over 40,000 free ebooks. They are digitized and diligently proofread with the help of thousands of volunteers. Here is just one sample of the many titles available. "Project Gutenberg's Beeton's Book of Needlework, by Isabella Beeton. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Beeton's Book of Needlework Author: Isabella Beeton Release Date: February 22, 2005 [EBook #15147] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 Produced by Julie Barkley and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15147/15147-h/15147-h.htm
The first section of the book is Tatting; pgs. i -iv, and 1 -82. The instructions include an illustration of a common post type shuttle and the rarely seen today, tatting pin on a chain and thumb ring. There are no illustrations of the hand positions.
Placing the thread around the hand to form a ring is called forming a loop.
Directions begin with what we consider today to be the second half stitch, followed by the first half stitch to complete a full double stitch.
Although the directions for the formation of a picot are the same as today, the picot itself is called a "purl" in this text. The use of the "purling pin" as a picot gauge to determine the size of the picots is included.
Here today's chain is called a straight or double thread which requires two shuttles. The text notes that the use of the chain makes it possible to join sections of the work, make beautiful patterns and even imitate point lace designs.
Enjoy!
Here's the latest article from the Tatting site at BellaOnline.com.
Split Ring Vintage Pattern Coats #14
An early example of the split ring was used in the J.P. Coats Co. Booklet #14.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art13842.asp
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Georgia Seitz, Tatting Editor
http://tatting.bellaonline.com
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