Beginning to Shuttle Tat!

Last summer when visiting my sister-in-law in Poland, one of her household helpers, Pane Janine, showed me how to tat.  I tried it out a bit, but never quite got the 'flip' action of the knots.  I wanted to try harder and so bought myself a cute shuttle and some sweet patterns to inspire myself, but have only just now tried it out again.

Here you have the first feeble attempts, culminating in a botched-up ring (at the bottom).... not very consistent and certainly I bungled the ring completely and decided to start over. 

Then I found my own personal round-the-clock teacher:  Marilee Rockley and her Shuttle Tatting course on www.craftsy.com.  In case you don't know Craftsy, they have a wide assortment of video courses that you can watch over and over.  Each class covers a topic in-depth and provide lists of the materials needed as well as all the necessary techniques and lots of the instructor's favorite tips, tricks, insights and experience as well.  

I took full advantage of this course; I watched Marilee over and over and over to see how that 'flip' knot was made, how she placed her hands, how she held the shuttle - everything, really - and then tried again and again to do it myself.



Here you can see where I started off rather shakily on the left trying to do some rings with chains in between and the odd picot (loop) tossed in!  Those first two are indeed quite shaky (okay, the word 'deformed' comes more to mind!), but then I started to get the swing of it and on the right are some recognizable chains with picots and rings with picots!  So exciting!





And here is a close-up of my fairly tidy tatting!

Back quickly to Marilee and her course:  The zoom-in camera angle where you see up close how to do the various parts of shuttle tatting was amazingly helpful and her commentary on just what needed to be done was a great accompaniment.

By the way, I got my cute shuttle online from Karrieann at her shop 2TomorrowsTreasures on Etsy.

Have a good day and try out something new!
Janice