But the effects of the bad weather of summer, rains, floods, fires, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes keep many of us in the house during this time. Fortunately, there is a way to have our beloved tatting, indeed all kinds of lace-making brought right to our doors and keyboards.
There are great publications for lace makers. The International Organization of Lace, Inc. (IOLI), Tatting Times by Karey Solomon, The Ring of Tatters, Barbara Foster's Handy Hands Tatting Newsletter and, of course, BellaOnline.com's Tatting Newsletter, all publish tatting and other lace patterns and information on a regular schedule. They are all worthwhile publications which I recommend you explore.
In my just received IOLI Bulletin, the inside cover featured at least 12 different styles of lace (tatting included) while the back cover displayed four lovely crazy quilt blocks. The blocks were beautifully embroidered and embellished with lace. And all four displayed tatting, too.
Wow! And there was more. The editor of "Tatting Times", Karey Solomon, presented a tutorial on pearl or +Maltese type tatting. And, Randy Houtz, of Shuttle Brothers fame, shared an illustrated, diagrammed and full-color photo of a picture frame tatted with the split ring (SR), the self-closing mock ring (SCMR), and the ingenious split/self-closing mock ring (S/scmr.)
Randy Houtz's tatting picture frame in blue, green and yellow is almost centered on the inside cover. Below it is the famous "Tatting Princess" by Jennifer Williams. The crazy quilt blocks are on the left and part of Karey Solomon's Pearl Tatted Bookmark in yellow is above the bottom row.
Like many tatters, I love studying lace of all kinds. I might be only a baby bobbin lacer learning my twist from my cross or fumble-fingered needle wielder but I do so admire many laces. In this issue of the IOLI Bulletin, I encountered a name new to me. It is called "Skane" lace from the Netherlands. And I was amazed to see a dragon rampant worked in wire guarding a garden gate! And then I saw the "Panos Knot" in the "Fleco Cuencano." It looked similar macrame worked with fine thread. I spied the word tatting in the directions and learned that the overhand loop of the tatting double stitch is the one used to make the complicated design. It is shown on the inside cover to the right of the Maltese-tatted bookmark.
Here's the latest article from the Tatting site at BellaOnline.com.
Measuring the Picot by Muskaan A tool called a picot gauge is used to measure the length of a tatted picot.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art305464.asp
Please visit tatting.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Tatting. To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Tatting located here -
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=39
I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback! Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge!
Georgia Seitz, Tatting Editor http://tatting.bellaonline.com One of the hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com
