You Will All Be Tatting One Day

Let me start off today with a little show and tell. Jane of Lamplighter has made yet another truly amazing light shade embellished with medallions she had me custom make for her. Her shades are spectacularly detailed and I am always honored to have a small piece of my work as a part of hers.

Yesterday while I was procrastinating instead of tatting masks, I read a post on threadsofatattinggoddess about why we blog and she made a comment about how there were so few tatting tutorials compared to say knitting or crochet ones. I have toyed around with the idea of doing how-to tutorials or videos, but I decided not to bother as they already existed online. I think I forgot that not everyone is a master of the search engine. If it is online I pride myself on my ability to find it. It hardly ever occurs to me that not everyone is as comfortable with searching as I am and just because I can find three different how-to articles doesn't mean that everyone else can.

Anyway, her post made me think that perhaps there were not enough different tutorials to choose from and adding to the pool may not be the waste of time that I initially assumed it would be. Do I think that I can do a better job than the others I've seen? No, not really. I'm not a photographer or videographer or a skilled writer, but I do know how to needle tat and maybe that's enough. I still have one more mask on order that I need to make up, but after that I plan on working on a basic how to needle tat and I will post it either here or more likely on Instructables since the site is pre formatted for such things. I just hope there are enough people curious to learn.

What's a little funny to me about my desire to convert people to the art of tatting is it was the lack of other tatters that brought me to the craft in the first place. I really liked the idea of being able to do something that few others could. I love the fact that people look at tatting like it must be some sort of magic and impossible to replicate. Even more amazing is the looks I receive when people actually watch me tat at full speed. I tell them it's not as hard as it looks and they never believe me. I do honestly want more tatters in the world. I want to see tatting embellishing high end clothing and celebrities wearing tatted jewelry (preferable mine) and I would love to walk into a bookstore and actually find a tatting book in stock. I refuse to believe that this is a dying art and I will do what little I can to keep it alive.

What A Lovely Lampshade!

You might remember Lamplighter from my tatting challenge. She took home second place for this amazing lampshade. With her winnings she commissioned me to make two large heart motifs for a future project. I was quite pleased with the motifs and wrote about them myself. They were my first large non-jewelry design project and I hoped that they would be exactly what she needed to create something new and amazing.

Guess what, they were and here is that incredible lampshade. What is even more incredible is the amount of sheer skill it takes to create these Victorian beauties. I can't even imagine the hours of hand stitching these must demand.

I will be making a couple more of these hearts for her in the near future as I knock out a few more projects I have in the pipeline. I will be certain to share those lovelies when they are made as well.

I'd also like to point out that this is one of the single best things that etsy has done for me. It has given me the opportunity to not only meet amazing artists all over the world, but has given me the chance to work with them as well. While not all of my collaborations have worked out for the best the vast majority have and it seem that every month or so a new opportunity arrives. I am truly grateful for each one of these projects and so glad to have met each one of these artists.

I also have a new project in the works that I'll wait until tomorrow to share with you.