Free digital vintage Tatting books and patterns

[Librarian]

Posted by C4G on January 17, 2008

This is not a commercial. Seriously! This is a public announcement! LOL

I was looking at another tatting blog today and found a vintage book of tatting patterns that I would not mind having. Then I went to ebay. One seller was selling a digital collection of PUBLIC DOMAIN material. Can you say "Rip-Off"?? If it is public domain it is free to the public.

I am not sure how I found this site, but I love it. It is a public digital library (http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/completelist.htm ) collection of old vintage tatting pattern books whose copyrights have expired. I have downloaded three complete books so far. They even have a yahoo group that you can join. They send out announcements when they add new books for downloading. I've already spotted several I am going to do & one that I am gonna modify into a pendent/pin to wear for St Patties day.

Don't get ripped off purchasing digital downloads of public domain material! Get it for free! Books and patterns that were published before 1923 are considered p... (http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/ ) Knowledge is power.

I really must stop looking online at tatting patterns and actually do some of them!! LMAO!

Laters!






Replies to This Discussion

Reply by Dr TLT on January 17, 2008 at 6:44pm

Yes, this is a really excellent website. I see the "digital tatting books" on ebay all the time that are posted for free on the site and wish the people paying for the books actually knew they could download them for free from the archive. I'm downloaded all the tatting books and have used a few of the patterns. There is a book in Finnish that is my favorite.


Reply by Sheron on January 18, 2008 at 4:59am

This is one of several sites. There is the Archive of Public Domain Tatting Patterns on Georgia Seitz's site, there is a University of Arizona site that also has this type of book.

I am collecting the files for Georgia's site so if you have a book she doesn't have that is in the Public Domain please send me a scanned copy, PDF file or JPEG's and I will get it to Georgia.

Judith Connors rus the Antique Pattern Library and she is also glad to get new books, not just tatting. Her group does more photo editing than I do.

Sheron

[Gill Colthart]

I have some vintage patterns but am having a problem understanding the instructions ie "purl". Can anyone give me a link that explains. Thank you

[CazEdwards]

Purl is just another way of saying pivot.

[PattyD]

The vintage tatting books especially from about 1850 when Mlle. Riego and others were active were inventing the language to talk about tatting. The first published book that we still have and safe in digital form doesn't even have pictures. So you have to be careful with the oldest books because sometimes purl means one thing and in another book, maybe even the same author, it will mean something else. Rings have been call ovals, oiullettes and other things I can't recall right now. The first half and second half of the DS have had individual names (and sometimes one of the names is the purl).

Towards the end of the 1800s, a split ring was described as "make stitches on the open part of the ring", which translates to the split side of a split ring.

So everything old is new again, but we don't always call it the same thing. I think naming the first half and the second half of a DS is a pretty good idea, but would be difficult to change at this point; not because of resistance from tatters, but resistance from publishers. The vast majority of tatting books were published by thread companies, so it was advertising, really.

[GraceT]

I clicked on http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/completelist.htm and found that it had moved to: http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/catalog.htm

Once I got there, I went a bit nuts and downloaded every book to do with tatting. If I do even 1% of the tatting I've downloaded, I'll be pretty proud of myself!

[Gill Colthart]

thank you for the good advice, I appreciate your help

[squeeky]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit I spend more time looking at the tatting books on APL than tatting their patterns. It's always a wonderful place to look for inspiration!

[SnapdragonLace]

I LOVE the APL. That's where I discovered the Priscilla tatting books. I'm working my way through them and modernizing the instructions (modern notation and using more modern techniques like split rings, SSSR and mock rings, etc). It can be difficult to get through some of the instructions in the old style, even when you find ones without mistakes. :) My blog is snapdragonlace.com. Would love to know if this sort of thing is helpful to others.

[GraceT]

I LOVE the APL. That's where I discovered the Priscilla tatting books. I'm working my way through them and modernizing the instructions (modern notation and using more modern techniques like split rings, SSSR and mock rings, etc). It can be difficult to get through some of the instructions in the old style, even when you find ones without mistakes. :) My blog is snapdragonlace.com. Would love to know if this sort of thing is helpful to others.

I just went to your blog. I'm interested in tatting some of the Priscilla edgings, so I do find your writeups very helpful! I've bookmarked it so I can go there easily.

[SnapdragonLace]

Hi Grace! Excellent! I hope they'll be helpful. I love the patterns in the Priscilla books, but they can take some time to sort through. At the moment I'm working on one of the insertions from book #1 and the tea cloth from book 2.

[preety]

Hi
whenever I try to open a pdf, it asks for password. what is that?

[LaurieE]

Preety - on which website? I have been on all three vintage websites and none of the PDFs require a password.

[Kvarta]

Try to open any other pdf, maybe your Acrobat has some problem (needs an update or something like that).

[preety]

I use ubuntu(liniux), anybody has information on how to open in that

[Judy]

The password is required if you want to OPEN the file. You may READ and PRINT pdf files, but you cannot change them unless you buy proprietary software from Adobe Acrobat, or a competetor. Download the free Adobe Acrobat version. I'll bet it works on linux or liniux.

[JoanB]

I use ubuntu(liniux), anybody has information on how to open in that

Preety: I use Linux Mint, very similar to Ubuntu; and had a similar problem in trying to open pdfs of vintage patterns, it turned out that I needed to install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat, when I had done that the problem was solved. The free version is the one I used.

[preety]

Thanks a lot everyone, i'll try installing latest version of adobe acrobat.
And judy, what is the password, if required.

[Judy]

I do not have the password. I cannot afford the paid version of Adobe Acrobat, and haven't needed it.