Judy

Well, you are doing just great! No teacher and off you go! Bravo!

Oh that is fantastic, the hard bit is over, now for the fun. It is worth trying other shuttles if you get a chance. thicker threads are also easier for checking how things are going. The main thing is to tat,tat,tat. I look forward to hearing about your progress.

Sounds to me like you are doing fine. Keep up the practice and speed will come in its own good time. Kudos to you!

I'm a needle tatter as well and hoping to try shuttle tatting soon. Thanks for sharing this!!

NO NO dont go over to the dark side. Needles forever!

Don't worry Green Gal! I'm not in love with the shuttle. I just want to know enough that if I get asked a question that I don't sound totally ignorant of the other side.

I was planning on buying a pair of clovers yesterday at a local yarn/needlepoint/xstitch store, but they were out of clovers. I'm positive I saw some there earlier. In fact, they had the metal thingy that you put on the clovers so that you can wind the thread. Interestingly, they had a couple of metal shuttles like the one I already have. They had one end welded and the other end closed with a couple of bent metal brackets... also with the detachable spool. Guess I know where to get spools now. However, after dithering, I didn't buy the shuttle. Picked up a package of plastic floss bobbins. I had a clerk helping me look, and while I dithered she actually went to the clovers catalog and had the catalog open when I checked out, wanting to know if I would like them to order some for me! I said yes, and we agreed that it would be great timing since I wouldn't be back for a couple of weeks.

I might have purchased needles, but the only ones they had were #5, and I'm already mostly working in smaller sizes.


Well I went home and pouted for a bit, and then wound some thread from a giant ball of crochet cotton onto pairs of the plastic spools so I'll have travelling sizes to work with. Which led me to try to tat with the plastic bobbins... well, I did about 10 stitches and voila, made my first tiny ring! ugly... I made a couple of stitches and then thought, here I am with CTM, why aren't I trying to figure out how the chain works. Well, that was a disaster. The threads were falling off both the bobbins and tangling and I retreated. Back to looking at the instruction drawings and photos.

My big project right now (just finished three crosses to take with me as gifts) is a curtain for my new kitchen window. Yes, I have a new window! Its double pane, insulated, and would be costing me an arm and a leg were it not for the federal credit you get for energy efficiency installations. Actually, I have 4 new windows, but I really need to deal with the kitchen window. I found a pattern in an Italian magazine from HH. Its a pretty simple pattern. I'm tatting as I watch football (aka soccer). Netherlands just beat Brazil! Anyway, I'm taking thread with me and will be using my sister's needle when I get there.

This will be it for a week or so.. unless I can get my sister to go to the library with me so I can show her what's up with In Tatters.

Have a wonderful time, I hope you get your sister involved :-) Happy tatting

I hate the idea of "sides"....but I am a confirmed shuttle tatter because I like the results better.
I could crochet something that was soft and floppy....or knit, if I wanted soft and fluffy.

I think it is great that you are using the shuttle, at least to get a feel for it even if you don't come over to the "other" side. LOL When you first begin, I'd say...get different shuttles. Metal shuttles don't do it...I have several old ones that I received in LOTS from EBay (because I wanted one or two of the good shuttles in the photo). And two sterling silver...but I consider those for my collection; haven't tried to use them...post shuttles. Metal can rust and get on your threads...also I'd begin with a larger size thread, so I could see the result better. You can do a chain CTM...the second shuttle becomes the chain (ball thread).
Yes, since the stitches use up thread the ring gets smaller, when there is a good flip, you can widen the ring, otherwise one is pretty much back to picking out the unflipped stitch.

Just wanted to encourage and congratulate you on your efforts.

One from the "others' bj

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm marking time till I can get my clovers. Huh, haven't heard or used that phrase since I left high school band practice. I'm not sure what I'll talk to classmates about since I don't expect that we have much of an overlap of interests.. 50 years and you really grow apart, not that I was particularly close to any of them anyway to start with.

I am excited to hear about your experiences with shuttles...keep us posted on your progress! I started on needles but switched to shuttles within a few days because I wanted the finer, stiffer effect. Lately I've been looking as some really nicely done needle tatted jewelry and cuffs online and it's making me think about trying some of my shuttle designs on a needle. I'm curious to know what you think about the difference between the two. I don't think I really worked on needles enough to judge.

Congratulations on your adventures in shuttle tatting! I too am a needle tatter and struggled for years with the "flip" idea of shuttle tatting. But after much encouragement, (and those mysterious vapors which draw you in to everything from tea to shuttles) I am more pleased at some of my acheivements at shuttle tatting than with my needle tatting.
I like shuttle tatting because you dont have to constantly have a length of thread to tie on for more ring thread. I also like the clover shuttles but prefer the aero type shuttles more as they have a built in hook and its easier for me to do rings and chains with it.
I have been thinking of you and your trip to WI, I hope you enjoy your time here, too bad we didnt have time to meet.
Have a safe and happy flight!

Its been nearly 3 weeks since I've tried the shuttle. Still don't have my clovers. The class reunion was more fun than I expected. I was right about my classmates and tatting, but they were complimentary of other things I've done. It was raining in WI most of the time I was there, so picnics were on screened porches, and we carried umbrellas everywhere. I ended up spending one day driving from Tomahawk to Markesan to visit my cousin's widow, who I was close to as a teen, and then from there to Eau Claire to hook up with my sister again while she was dog sitting for her son. I thought about you "mad" as I was hustling down I-35, but without either a phone or time or your address it was impossible to do more than feel wistful. "PF" I haven't enough skill on a shuttle to make any comparison yet. I'll have to check on the clovers tomorrow. One other exciting bit. I had lunch after church with some of my sister's friends. One of them is a snowbird who spends her winters around Austin. She is very excited about learning needle tatting. She has a group in Texas where they keep teaching each other new things. I convinced her that she could do the tatting. Now that I'm home, I have to follow up. My sis agreed to lend her a needle so she could get started.

You're doing much better than I am transitioning from needle to shuttle. I worked for three hours and never got more than two DS's at a time. And yet teaching myself to needle tat was so easy.

Yeah, shuttle is sloooooooooowwwwww. I have to thinkkkkkkkkk to much.. and then untat.. The flip is the least of my problems. I got that right away. I actually use two different pieces of cord and make a ds with one over the other one, then I tell my students to pull on the ds thread ends and watch what happens... FLIP.

Well, I got my pink and blue clovers... they have sharp points! (Which I've had to use for untatting) I've now tried two different methods for the first half stitch. The Utube video looked so clear, just catch the shuttle thread with your pinkie, pull it to the side, dive up under the ring thread and when you bring the shuttle back, be sure to drop it....yes, about 60% of the time. My pinkie wants to be involved in holding the shuttle and giving it another job seems to distract my other fingers and the shuttle gets loose. So, I'm going for the "put the shuttle thread over the ring thread on your knuckles and then do the dive under the ring thread. Ok, that works better for me. The second half is not a problem. Is there another position that will work that I haven't discovered? I'm using a #5 thread... big stuff.. I finished three joined rings.. No chains yet.

I've done a ring and a chain, and then went wa... how do I do this ring again? OOeee I'm a slow learner. But. There's nothing like spending money to solve a problem . (Besides I want to encourage my local JoAnn's to carry tatting) So today I bought their only tatting book. Really, one I don't have. Its Learn to Tat, with the "interactive dvd" by Janette Baker. The tatting instructions seem just my creeping sloth speed. 42% off on the books yes, I also bought a book on crocheted booties.

I've gotten brave enough to share two photos. I'm going to look at them one at a time here. They're the only thing in my beginning shuttle album.
These are not my absolutely first attempts, but pretty close.
photo 2
Joined rings. Easier than I expected. My tension is not precise. I wasn't actually counting stitches, and often forgot and had to go back to put in picots, or forget to join. So then I tried out a chain. Ring first, then attaching the thread and doing a chain... too easy, so I tried some Josephine stitches which spiralled satsifactorily. All this while holding the shuttle in a death grip. The #5 thread leaves something to be desired. No tight twist, feels punky.
you can see when I quit the chain and did a ring... if I could remember what I did, I must have gone back to a shuttle only ring. Ugh on the uneven chain stitches.

Now for the second photo: the long spiral chain. Somehow I relaxed and loosened up when I started this chain (with a useless knot of course) I was so happy to not even notice the thread slipping under my fingers so I could focus on trying to make the tension even and the picots of different sizes! Not too good at that yet. Lots of those tiny looking picots were not supposed to be there. Then I left off the chain and did a ring. Whew, a whole garage full of problems showed up. See that gap where the ball thread goes to the right? It wasn't there when I started the ring.
1. Is there a knot you're supposed to make after a long chain? What would keep this from happening? An unflipped half perchance? After I'd been working on the ring I noticed the separation. Bad...
2. Switched plans and tried to do 3 rings, NO space between. I failed at that, too. How do you keep those cloverleafs together?
3. Do shuttle tatters usually do R single shuttle, then CH - shuttle and ball, then R single shuttle again?
Uses up lots of shuttle thread doing that.
4. Is that fast emptying of the shuttle why shuttle tatters do the SCMR? yes, yes, I know the instructions are out there for SCMR but I'm not looking now. I can see why shuttle tatters could avoid learning it. Ms. Baker does not include instruction on this technique. An old poll asked if SCMR was a beginner, intermediate or advanced technique. I now understand why it came out intermediate or advanced. SCMR vs Chain are trivial differences when needle tatting, but are significantly different in shuttle tatting if Ms. Baker's omitting the topic is any indicator.

5. I discovered why its important to load the shuttle properly for the type of motion I'm using. It was a PITA so I gave in, unloaded it and then reloaded it. Ms. Baker's book has been very careful on this point.

I believe that from time to time I'll come back to shuttle tatting to see how the other techniques are done. However, I'm so unhappy about the lack of uniformity of stitches that I'm really not going to spend any significant time trying to perfect that aspect. Like the music teacher who has a gifted student, I want to be able to get a shuttle tatter started, but they're going to have to move to a better teacher at some point. There are plenty of them here on this site. Soo, until I pick up a new technique, this blog will be in hibernation except to read and respond to anything anybody posted on my observations.