What Is This Needle Tatting You Speak Of?

I've only been tatting for a couple of years and when I mention my craft I can just about count on one of three stock responses.

1. I've never heard of that, what is tatting?
2. My grandma used to tat, I tried to learn, but couldn't get it.
3. Wow, that's a lost art.

I could spend hours debating the history of tatting, there seem to be a lot of myths about when and why people began to tat. If you want the history wikipedia is a good start. Instead, I'll just tell you what it is that I do. I needle tat, it's a cousin to the shuttle tatting you may have seen. It is all but indistinguishable from shuttle tatting in the finished product, but it differs in method. The closest craft to tatting is most likely macrame. Both processes involve the trying of knots. Tatting has really one trick, the double stitch. When used with picots the ds forms rings and chains that work up into fairly durable pieces of lace.

I often hear from people that they could never learn to tat. Nonsense, it's much easier to needle tat than many other fiber arts. Grandma probably tried to teach you shuttle tatting and all those wrist twists and shuttle weaving confused you to no end. Trying the same thing on a needle makes it easier to understand what you are doing. Try it, you'll like it.

Tatting is not a lost art. When I was teaching myself to tat, I went online and was bombarded with patterns and tutorials and many communities full of creative tatters. No it's not as popular as knitting or crochet, but it's far from lost. I've seen hundreds of tatters online and dozens of books for sale on the subject. Here's a few links I ran across early on, you can also just Google tatting or needle tatting and you'll be surrounded by information.

• Bella Online
• Handy Hands Tatting
• Needle Tatting Two