As the season changes and the school children are gathering their supplies, it is a good time to take stock of our tatting needs, too.
I asked a group of tatters for their advice on the following subjects.
What to carry as your basic tatting kit (btk?)
How to store shuttles needle and threads?
What small tatted project is easy to make and keep on hand to give away?
What pattern to carry with you for "emergency" moments? (What constitutes a tatting emergency? Being stuck on the one paved road in the area when 20,000 caribous decide to cross the road on their annual migration and you are going nowhere for hours.)
Here are a few good suggestions for what to carry as your basic tatting kit (btk?)
1. I carry 2 aeros, bobbins, nail clipper, small needle case, awl, laminated small 'go to' pattern, thread on a plastic flex bobbin, needle threader, & your picot gauges! (Blush, blush, thanks for that compliment. I am so glad that you enjoy our picot gauges. G. Seitz) - Joan T.
2. I carry 2 full shuttles with hooks for joining, the tatting project and a photocopy of the pattern. I use my fingernail clippers in my purse as scissors and a coffee stir stick or toothpick as a picot gauge. Very basic, bare bones. Anita B.
3. I asked my engineer daughter to design a bag for my tatting. She came up with a fabric bag to sling over my shoulder with pockets for shuttles, crochet hooks, tins holding picot gauges, and pens/pencils. It's been repaired several times. After 10 years, it's still going strong. The key for me was using a bad CD as the bottom. Double the fabric so that it came up the sides for extra thickness and I was in business. It's held balls of thread, a bunch more tools, kleenex, a bag of GORP, and hand sanitizer, etc.... Taking it through the airport in Germany went well until the Security agent wanted to see me tat. I didn't understand his German, he didn't speak English, but I could decipher "macht" and decided to tat a bit to see if that would do. I made the flight and he was so happy! Melanie C.
4. Basic tatting kit is shuttles, thread, hook, scissors and a pin or two along with a copy of whatever pattern you are working on. Course, your shuttles should be special, your scissors imported, your thread lovely 6-ply and the pins must have special pretty heads. Mary MC
Check in next week for more amazing tips.
Here's the latest article from the Tatting site at BellaOnline.com.
Eva Shock's Butterfly w/Needle Lace Eva Shock was inspired by discussions in the 2004 online tatting class of Romanian point lace (RPL) and by the elements of designing. Here is her butterfly pattern with split ring tatting and needle lace.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art305556.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
