Almost everything you wanted or needed to know about Tatting
Tatting is a technique for handcrafting a notably heavy duty lace constructed by using a combination of knots and loops. Tatting may be made use of in order to make lace edging in addition to doilies, collars, together with other decorative pieces.
The Tatting Lace is formed with a pattern of rings and chains formed by a series of cow hitch, or half-hitch knots, termed double stitches (ds), over a core thread. Gaps may be left between the stitches to form picots, which can be employed for practical construction in addition to decorative effect.
Tatting dates into the early 19th century. The term for tatting in the majority of European languages springs out of French frivolité, which describes the purely decorative nature of the textiles generated by this method. The technique began to mimic point lace.
Some consider that tatting patterns might have developed from netting and decorative ropework as sailors and fishers would put together motifs for girlfriends and wives at home. Decorative ropework practiced on ships includes techniques (esp. coxcombing) that relate striking similarity with tatting. A first-rate description of this may be observed in Knots, Splices and Fancywork.
Some believe tatting originated over 200 years ago, often citing shuttles observed in eighteenth century paintings of women for instance Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Madame Adelaide (daughter of Louis XV of France), and Anne, Countess of Albemarle. A close inspection of such paintings shows that the shuttles involved are too large to generally be tatting shuttles, and they actually are knotting shuttles.
There isn’t any documentation, nor any instances of tatted lace, that date earlier than 1800. All the available evidence shows that tatting started in the early 19th century.
Older designs, especially throughout the early 1900s, are likely to use fine white or ivory thread (fifty to one hundred widths within the inch) and intricate designs. This thread was either crafted from silk or perhaps a silk blend, permitting for improper stitches to be easily removed.
Newer designs belonging to the 1920s and onward often use thicker thread in one or more colors. The best quality thread for tatting is actually a “hard” thread which doesn’t untwist readily.
DMC Cordonnet thread is a very common tatting thread; Perl cotton is an instance of an attractive cord that is nonetheless somewhat loose for tatting purposes. Some tatting types incorporate ribbons and beads.
Because so many fashion magazines, and home economics magazines out of the first 1 / 2 of the 20th century attest, tatting had a substantial following. When fashion included feminine touches for example lace collars and cuffs, and inexpensive yet lovely baby shower gifts were needed, this creative art flourished. When the fashion moved to a far more modern look and technology made lace an easy and inexpensive commodity to purchase, hand-made lace began to decline.
Tatting has been utilized in occupational therapy to maintain convalescent patients’ hands and minds active during recovery, as documented, by way of example, in Betty MacDonald’s The Plague & I.