Tatting has always held a bit of a contradiction for me, and I don’t mean to scare anyone by saying this, but it is difficult to learn. That’s partially because it is difficult for many people to find a tatting teacher, and partially because the craft is simply difficult to learn. (Was that another contradiction?)

Like many tatters, I’ve tried most popular needle crafts at some point; I can crochet a little and knit, though badly, and embroider decently and sew and quilt pretty well. Now here is the contradiction. In my experience, tatting has the steepest learning curve of all of these, but, and bear with me before you run screaming to a knitting website, once learned, tatting is the easiest needlework to actually do.

It’s just that blasted stitch transfer that trips everyone up. Once you’ve got that down, you’re golden. Okay, so there are a few other things to learn, but that’s the tricky one. When I was learning shuttle tatting from my grandmother, I kept going back to her and insisting “show me that one more time, Gram” till she was blue in the face. But I was determined to learn.

Now, as I have been teaching quite a few tatting classes lately at Santa Fe Quilting, I’m getting a good perspective at where most people are having difficulties, and what questions they keep coming back with. So, in an effort both to give my students a way to review lessons at home, and to introduce tatting to the world at large, I’m starting this Absolute Beginner Tatting Series.

Here is the very first video in the series, which starts off with the very first skill in tatting: how to wind your shuttle. There will be many more videos to come, so please give me feedback on what topics you would like to see, how the video is presented, what is helpful and what you would like me to do differently. These videos are for you, so let me know what you want.

Without any further ado, here is How to Wind a Shuttle:

Notice that there ARE closed captions available! Yay!

See you at the next video lesson!

This post is the first in a series of Absolute Beginner Tatting Lessons. Jump to the next lesson, The Dreaded Double Stitch.