Tatting ... or frivolite

Since my mother gave me a tatting shuttle, some threads and some tatting she had done (see the blog earlier this month) I have been looking at tatting. And I have ordered some new shuttles for the website and am looking at threads too.

So what is tatting? Well I will start by passing on the introduction from  'Learn to Tat' from J & P Coats of Paisley in Scotland, which is undated but looks very '50s to me.

I love the models matching nails and lipstick!








So here is the introduction:

Frivolite is the charming name that the French, with their nice sense of the apposite, give to the needlework we know as 'tatting' - and a very much more appropriate word it is! The art of tatting seems to have originated on the Continent where an early form of it was very popular in the elegant, second half of the eighteenth century and, when it crossed the Channel, prim English ladies possibly considered that the adoption of the Continental title might provoke unseemly misunderstanding. Certainly 'Miss Emma is at her frivolity' would have sounded an altogether indecorous statement to an early Victorian mamma - and so tatting it became; but tatting is hardly descriptive of the exquisite, frothy result a good needlewoman produces with the little instrument called a tatting shuttle.

It was the Victorians, about a hundred years ago, who first revived the art and considerably improved the process of working. The great Mrs Beeton, who died in her twenties, having produced her monumental treatise on Household Management when scarcely more than a girl, also planned a comprehensive book on needlework, and she considered the subject of tatting so important as to devote the first considerable section to it. This book, completed by other experts, was published after her death.

After the first world war, however, all things Victorian, good, bad or indifferent were lumped together and classed as 'stuffy'. As a result many fine needlework arts were forgotten, until a few years ago women began to rediscover what might be called the more feminine handicrafts. So it was, that about the time when the so-called 'new look' began to turn the fashion world upside down, tatting, one of the most enchanting of such handicrafts, was revived and began to enjoy a new lease of life. As one would expect, it was smart Frenchwomen who first saw the many exciting possibilities of tatting for present day use but they were speedily followed by the fashionable in England and America, and this fascinating form of needlework is now being used to glamorise clothes as well as household linens of all kinds. Tatting has become, for the third time in a hundred and fifty years, a modish pastime and it looks likely to be an enduring vogue - as it deserves to be. It is a simple enough process and, with practice, proficiency comes quite soon even to the not so neat fingered: considering the elaborate effect obtained this is decidedly gratifying. 

A modish pastime indeed - I can't wait to get started!



Here are a few more pictures from 'Learn to Tat'.

Nancy again

I just wanted to share this beautiful pendant bird that Nancy has made. It is really tiny and exquisite.

 

My Jane Crowfoot mystery blanket ...

.... is moving along slowly - I am a couple of months behind but it isn't a race and I am really enjoying doing it. The colours Jane chooses always thrill me, and this is one of her very best - just beautiful especially the contrast between the blue and the orange. Here are a couple of pics of the work I have just pinned out for blocking - ignore the ends I have not finished off yet.

I particularly like the stripy squares (below) - I would love to do a jacket in that pattern.

An ideal day

There can be few more lovely ways to spend an hour or so than sitting  outside a beautiful country pub .... and this is the Crown somewhere in the Cotswolds.

The hanging baskets were full of geraniums and the like ...

 ... and the views were lovely too.













And what better to look at than Selvedge, my favourite journal - it's arrival is always an occasion for me. This month's cover is up to the usual standard - it is the pictures and the layout that make it special for me.  The articles tend to be fairly short - I would often like more depth - but two that stood out for me this time were: 





'Peruvian Featherwork', a brief excerpt from a book of that name by Heidi King (I am adding that to my 'oh-if-only- I could afford it wishlist). 





'Panos de Terra: slave made fabric in Cape Verde' was a good read, a geographical area I knew nothing about.

Tatting --- the joy of old things

Tatting is something my mother Margaret learned (from a family friend called Mrs Stringer) while serving in the WRENS during the Second World War. I was over at her house the other day, having brought my crochet to do, but I forgot my hook so she had a rummage around for hooks and during the rummage found her long lost tatting. 

There is a beautiful piece of white lace, begun but never finished (makes me feel better about all the half finished projects I have!).

On the right is a cotton hankie that she had started to edge with tatting, but had rather quickly given up. Again I empathise with mum - so many things just started and never progressed. 

I love the beautiful tatting shuttle (is that the right word?). I own up to a love of craft equipment. I feel that often our hobbies and pastimes reflect our primitive hunter gatherer instincts - we hunt out and gather yarns and equipment instead of berries and insects. I particularly like old equipment and really think I should start hunting for that. This shuttle is very tactile, beautiful to look at and touch.