Learning as I Go

When you learn tatting you need to adopt what I call a "learning as I go" mentality. The short explanation of this is, accept that you will not learners aspect of tatting immediately. The long explanation of this is going to be the basis for today's post. 

I do not know every aspect of tatting. I've been tatting for nearly a decade and I'm still learning. Tatting has so many aspects that you cannot possibly learn them all in 1 year. Especially, if you're like me, when just learning the double stitch itself can be so complicated. It took me a year to understand the process behind making a double stitch. But when you finally get that first project made, the exhilaration makes up for the shear disappointment of how long it took. Patience is lesson number 1. Take your time, pay attention to your work and be willing to throw away a lot of mistakes. 

The easiest project, or motif, I ever learned is one that is still my favorite to use today. In fact you've seen pictures of it already on this blog. A simple flower consisting of six rings and six chains. This is the motif I make when learning new techniques (new to me, I should say). In fact, I'm finally confident enough in my tatting to use beads and here is an example of the flower motif I'm talking about. 

You can see that my beads are not all perfectly set in my work. But as with all tatting technique and time will improve all errors.