Tatting Class 6 ~ Double Shuttles

Here's my little practice piece from tatting class number 6 in my Learn to Tat book. The new concepts were working with two shuttles and also making Josephine Knots for the first time.

I used size 8 tatting cotton and it was so nice to get back to a finer fiber after my class 5 project. Working with two shuttles was easy enough. I used two different colored plastic shuttles so I could tell them apart.

What I'm starting to realize after just over a week of tatting, is that I could end up with big shuttle collection. I wonder how many shuttles the average tatter owns? It's easy to have some thread left over after a project. I don't really want to unwind and waste all that thread, so I find myself looking for another shuttle to use.

I picked up a couple of these metal shuttles. They are nice because they have a bobbin that slides in and out. If you have thread left on a bobbin, you can just use a new bobbin. The extra bobbins are sold in four packs and both the shuttle and the bobbins are reasonably priced.

Another perk with this bobbin shuttle is that you can give it a little tug when you need more thread. You don't have to spin the whole shuttle around to unwind some length. A down side to using these might be double shuttle patterns. How would you tell one shuttle from the other? Maybe a cute little sticker on one of the shuttles or something like that.

Back to my sampler. The Josephine Knots are the little rings on the top of my edging. They really aren't hard to make. Now that I've gotten comfortable with the basic double knot and the handling of the shuttles and thread, the new concepts are coming easier. I'm actually really looking forward to the next lesson because it covers split rings. When I first decided to dive into this world of tatting, back when I discovered cro-tatting, one of the first things I wanted to make was a continuous chain of rings. Now I know that it's the split ring technique that will allow me to do that.