I can blame this one on Reddit. In the list on the side of of the /r/crafts subreddit, there is a link to /r/tatting. Tatting? I had never heard of it before. Here we go again. Tatting wasn’t on my list of things I wanted to research! But I had to know everything about it because… you know… addict.

This is how bad my addiction is: I don’t actually like the look of tatting. There are some really beautiful things out there, like TotusMel‘s Etsy shop. I just don’t think it’s something that I would ever wear. It’s just not my style.

The main reason I picked it up is because making it looks neat to do. Also, it’s cheap. You can either buy some tatting needles for $12 or a pair of shuttles for $7, and a ball of  thread (I got  Lizbeth brand size 20 thread in rose pink and black). I think needle tatting looks easier to do, but shuttle tatting isn’t difficult either.

To get started, I went through the tutorials at Tatted Treasures’ Learning Tatting. There I learned to make rings, picots (the t is silent), chains and how to read patterns. Figuring out patterns and how to read them is the hardest part for me.

For my first real project, I followed this video to make a pair of earrings. In the video, she is doing needle tattings, so I watched it, wrote down the pattern, and then did it with shuttles instead.

I didn’t do a very good job of tying off the ends. When I started to make the second earring (on the right), I totally lost track of where I was and made a short chain instead of the long chain that was supposed to be in the middle. Oops 🙂

The pattern from the video:

R 3— 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3
Ch 7
R 6 j 6
Ch 3 – 3 – 3 – 3
R 6 j 6
Ch 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3
R 6 j 6
Ch 3 – 3 – 3 – 3
R 6 j 6
Ch 7