Have You Ever Tried Tatting?

And I don't mean getting any sort of tattoos. LOL I'm not really a fan of those, to be honest, although I have seen some pretty neat looking ones. No, I mean a craft called tatting. It's very lace-like in appearance. I remember my mom attempting to learn how to tat using a shuttle, but she never did get the hang of it. Those were the days before the internet. I suspect had she ever gotten into using the computer and the internet, she would have utilized all the tutorials you can find and maybe figured it out.

Several months ago, as I was walking through Hobby Lobby by the DMC floss, I noticed the book they sell on learning to tat. I picked one up and was intrigued as there was a method shown called needle tatting. I bought the book and a needle and tried my hand at it. I made a medallion, which I sent in a birthday package to Kathi.

I then got distracted by other projects and didn't really delve much more into tatting until this week. I came across a giveaway post on Poppies at Play the other morning. Normally, I don't pay much attention to giveaway posts, as I don't enter them (at least not very often at all). My reasoning is I don't think it's quite fair to enter and try to win when I don't do giveaways on my own blog. Anyway, I was scrolling through the post and saw a picture of a tatted butterfly. You know me and my thing for butterflies. So, I slowed down and saw a tatted pumpkin! Oh my heavens! Well, it turns out the creator of these cute items has a blog and I clicked over and just loved the 'tatties' that the blogger created as hairpieces for babies! The blogger is Coretta and you can find her terrific blog Corettadeesign, here. She also has an etsy shop that you can find here. And you must look here to see the most adorable owl tattie she created. I left a comment asking her if she had patterns for her designs available. It took awhile for her to respond(she only offers completed tatties), she's a busy mom, I'm sure, so in the meantime, I printed off one of the photos of her pumpkin and tried to recreate it with my limited tatting knowledge. I was able to make one that looked similar. I've gotten her permission to share my tatted pumpkin with you...yay! If you want some of these for yourself...you must head over to her shop and see what she has to offer.

Not too shabby for not having done any thing like this before, huh?

I was also enamored of the flowers she creates and I did a search on tatted flowers. I came across this video on Instructables and followed along, creating this:

How fun!

I'd love to try the owls and of course the butterflies. I want to add them to cards, since there are no girl babies around here anymore. Dang, wish I had known about these back when the girls were teeny...they were of the baldish persuasion for so long and these would have looked so very cute on them! Ahhhh well.

I took this picture to give you an idea on the size. Mine are larger than Coretta's, but that is perfectly fine with me. 

Nope, I won't be making these to sell (cuz you know I don't sell what I make anyway, as much as you ask me to do so), nor will I go into how they are made-needle tatting is pretty straightforward, I think, and you can do a search for the how-to-or watch the video I linked above, she does a great job showing how to make that flower. Coretta's worked hard on her designs and was gracious to let me share her ideas with you. Thanks so much, Coretta, if you read this post.

This is the reason I didn't get the Polly pumpkin done, I was distracted by wanting to tat. LOL I think I am highly distract-able when it comes to crafting!

Thanks for stopping by!

Hope you have a great weekend!