Tatting

Tatting is a technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops, used to make lace edging as well as doilies, collars, and small accessories such as earrings and necklaces. The lace is formed from a pattern of rings and chains built from a series of cow hitch or half hitch knots, called double stitches, worked over a core thread, with gaps left between stitches to form decorative picots. Contemporary tatting methods arose in the nineteenth century, shaped by the numerous publications of Mlle Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere, who developed the concepts and terms for picots and chains still used today. The oldest method is shuttle tatting, worked with a small boat shaped shuttle that holds the wound thread and guides it through the loops, though a later method called needle tatting substitutes a long blunt needle for the shuttle and produces a slightly thicker, looser result. In German the craft is usually called Occhi or Schiffchenarbeit, meaning work of the little boat, and in Italian it is called chiacchierino, meaning chatty, both names reflecting how the hobby was traditionally practiced in conversation among groups of women.