How to Read Tatting Diagrams

Tatting is a type of needlework used to make lace or lace edgings. You can use a single shuttle, two shuttles or a shuttle and a ball, along with tatting thread, heavier than regular sewing thread. The shuttle loops and knots the thread into a variety of different patterns. One of the first steps to learning tatting is learning to read the instructions and diagrams.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Look at your tatting diagram. You may see a series of abbreviations, little pictures with numbers or both.

2. Study the abbreviations. You may find any of the following: R, st, ch, ds, p, cl r, rw, sp, sm p, lg p, sm r, lg r, sep and the asterisk (*). You may also find a dash or minus sign, which could indicate a picot, while a several dashes may indicate the length of the picot.

3. Learn what the letter abbreviations mean. An uppercase R means ring; st means stitch; ch means chain, or a sequence of stitches made on a ball thread but not made into a ring; p means picot; cl r indicates you should close the ring, or turn a chain into a ring; rw indicates reverse work, or in other words, turn your work over so what was the top edge is now the bottom; sp means space; sm p indicates a small picot; lg p indicates not a large picot but a long one; sm r means small ring, while lg r means large ring; sep indicates separated, and the asterisk means that the instructions following it should be done once, followed by the number specified in the pattern.

4. Acquaint yourself with the older style of instructions, which can use letters and dashes. For example, a pattern such as "3-3-3-3 RW" means the same thing as "3 ds, 3 p sep by 3 ds, 3ds, cl r, rw." Both mean that you'll make a ring, beginning and ending with three double stitches, with three picots spaced with three double stitches in between them and reverse your work at the end.

5. Examine the diagram to make the instructions clearer to you. You may see, for example, two tear-drop shapes connected by an arc at their top points, with a short straight line going up from the center of the arc, and short lines to the outer side of each tear-drop and another connecting them, with two more short lines descending from the bottom of each tear-drop. A number such as 3 or 4 may be on either side of the top-most line, then on both sides of the tops of each tear-drop, and again on both sides of the bottom. The numbers show you how many stitches to make, the straight lines show that you should make a picot there, the arc indicates a chain and the loops are rings.

6. Familiarize yourself with both the abbreviations, as discussed in Steps 3 and 4, and the diagrams. This will enable you to read most tatting patterns. Special instructions that come with the pattern or the book containing the pattern should resolve any confusion.

Tips & Warnings

• Always look at the pattern or book to see if there's a special instruction page or an abbreviations page. Abbreviations may vary among different pattern designers.
• Tatting patterns made before 1940 often use different wording or abbreviations. If you want to make one of these, try to find a book from that era that explains the abbreviations used.
• You can find online tatting classes, including interactive classes to practice the instructions, on the Yarns by Design Web site (see Resources below).

Resources

• Look at the website for online class information.