Gifts from Afar...

I'm such a lucky person!  I "met" a wonderful lady in New Zealand with whom I started exchanging messages, talking about tatting and other things.  Then one day she said that she was going through her library and she'd send me the booklets/leaflets she had in duplicate...  Well, I can't tell you how surprised I was to see a BOX arrive in the mail!  I was expecting a few leaflets but she sent me an absolute treasure of tatting delights!

I don't think I even spread them out properly enough on this photo and not all the publications are visible.  This includes a couple of Norma Benporath booklets which made me think of Jon straight away in view of her work with Norma's patterns recently and also a copy of Thérèse de Dillmont's little book!  I can't believe I have my very own real book as I absolutely love this publication and only had it printed from the internet.  

Many don't have specific authors and are Semco or Coats booklets but some do have names like Marjorie Willis or Hilary Thornton; there is also a great little book called the Craft of Tatting by Bessie M. Attenborough.  There are so many others and LOADS of wonderful patterns to be found within their pages which I shall be sharing with you in the near future.  I know I'll just have too many bookmarked and on my "to-do" list!

THANK YOU so much my friend!

I was going to end here but felt this post, although about tatting books, was missing... some tatting!  So I leafed through quickly to find a motif I could tat in a short time to add to this post.  This motif caught my eye in the "Learn Tatting" booklet by Coats (1959)... and I thought, mmmm, I've seen this somewhere...  I'm sure some of you will have recognised it:  it can also be found in Mary Konior's Tatting Patterns book (p.61).  In fact Mary Konior does state in her book that the design was originally published by Coats and I'm delighted to now own the original!  Although like many older patterns, sadly no designer name is given.  

A nice little motif... square of course!

The pattern states to tat this with a shuttle and ball.  But when you get to the larger rings on the ends, you realise that you either need another shuttle or that you have to do like what they appear to have done in the photos which is to use just one shuttle but twist the work a bit after the ring so that the threads face the right way to make the next chain.  What I did instead, to make it with one shuttle only, was to use a SCMR on the larger rings.  Works well. 

Best wishes,

Frivole