Sunday, July 6, 2008

I am so full of watermelon right now.

In honor of Independence Day, a craft that is just about as old as the nation: tatting. It's a form of lacework with definite advantages over other lace methods:

1) can be done with only minimal equipment (thread, needle or shuttle, hands)
2) easy to design your own patterns
3) infinitely easier than bobbin lace

Anybody can tat. If you know how to crochet or knot at all, it'll take you less than five minutes to figure out tatting on needles. Shuttle tatting is only a little harder (the hardest part of it being actually finding a tatting shuttle*).







These are some basic medallions (tatting in a circle) that I did waaaay back in high school.

The internet is full of tatting tutorials and instructions, better than anything I could come up with. Some places to start:

Handy Hands
Tattered
Vintage patterns

And now, back to watermelon-eating and making a mess of my portfolio. ^-^ Cheers.

No comments: