Craftree Forum Tree > Tat-Alongs > 2015 Beginner's Mystery Tat-A-Long
Boiling, "killing" - must remember this for the taming of doilies in the future...
I tatted the bulk of this while we were on a cross country road trip. About 5,000 miles. 4 kids in a van. So this doily has been places. :) and it had the sweet bonus of winning a blue ribbon at the county fair when we got home. :)
Congratulations! What wise judges you have at your county fair, who recognize quality and beauty when it is presented to them. Good job!
I am so thankful I found this now, I can do this and see what everyone go through and use the tips
I am excited to try this one :) new to tatting but I am determined to learn
so i was looking at the pattern and sadly i discovered that i have no idea how to start this pattern 1 shuttle is it enough to make the pattern or the continuous thread thing where its wound on the shuttle attached to the ball if so which end of the thread do the stitches go on the ball end or shuttle end sorry to be so clueless all help GREATLY appreciated
Deep breath, Shelley. You do this just one step at a time, and each step is nothing you can't handle. This pattern is a basic ring and chain, so you only need one shuttle. Wind your shuttle and do not cut the thread from the ball. You begin with a ring, reverse work and chain, reverse work and ring, joining to the first and second picots of previous ring. This is repeated around for a total of 10 rings and 10 chains. The only possibly tricky bit is that each ring is joined in two picots instead of just one. So choose a shuttle and get started. If you do run into a problem, post your question and a photo of what you have done so you can get as accurate an answer as possible. Above all, don't freak out. You've tatted rings and chains before. This is nothing new. Oh, one last thing. Keep your tension as even as possible. It tends to cup a little in the first round or two, but that's not a problem. It sorts itself out as you add more rounds.
in reply to Lynn's post:
I finally got the nerve up to just start it and try to do it ........with much success I got 9 rings and chains done went to bed got up to start again looked at the pattern to see i need 10 so i went to tatting and ............then..........i looked at what i had done........... I joined to the wrong ring way to far into it to back out and jacked it completely up :( so I tried to undo it all but just made a tangled mess cut the strings and gonna start over after I get home later. thank you so much for your post I am gonna try again and this time pay attention to what i am doing lol
in reply to shelley.sanderson's post:
LOL. Did I forget to mention paying attention? Yeah, that trips me up too. I've been tatting for over 30 years. Yesterday I managed to close a ring that was the wrong count and attached in the wrong place. In my attempt to open the ring I once again failed to pay attention and shredded this very soft thread that I shouldn't have been using in the first place. Binned the whole thing and started over. With better thread. Sometimes I just need to go into a very quiet place, read the pattern through a few times and then count every single stitch. But once I get it right, the results are so worth everything I had to do to make it work out. I find that it's usually the easy stuff that I have to redo, because it's easy. I fail to pay close enough attention. That's always a mistake. Carpenters have a saying - Measure twice, cut once, hammer to fit. I've adapted that to - Read the pattern two or more times, count before closing rings, and be ready to incorporate oopses into tactical design choices. So, I have every confidence that you'll get it, Shelly. And when you do, be sure to post photos so we can all applaud.
in reply to shelley.sanderson's post:
That's it. The more you try the better you get. I spent lots of my first year tatting by cutting it off, restart, then have to retro tat, then try again. But this way you also get better at fixing the mistakes as well.
in reply to shelley.sanderson's post:
Don't give up Shelley! I too struggled heaps, and restarted, and unpicked, and cut bits out etc. I have now completed three of them and love them. All three are full of mistakes, but they are individual. Eventually I stopped trying to pick out every mistake, and would check to see if it made a difference to the next round or not. If not... it stayed!
I would recommend counting the number of rings in your round when you finish each round. Many times I would be doing the next round, only to find something I had missed in the previous round. Eventually I learnt how to cut sections out and fix, then continue with the other round, but sometimes this isn't possible. It is a great piece to gain confidence with, and is so pretty when it is finished!
