Friday, November 23, 2007

When your shuttle runs out of thread...

...one way to deal with it is to refill your shuttle at the time you are ready to start the next ring. You can leave the chain thread intact if you have more thread available for filling your shuttle.


In this case, I did not think it was necessary to tie any sort of knot to connect the new thread to the old. I simply started a new ring, and put the old end through in the same direction as the core of the new ring. The photo above shows the first half of the first double stitch.

This photo shows the first half of the first double stitch, after it has been tightened.

Continuing in the same way, always putting the old end through the same way as the core of the new ring.


I decided to continue hiding the end through the join. Same principle, just put the old end though in the same direction as the core thread of the ring.

In the photo above, you can see the old end sticking out of the ring. It's best to just leave it while you tat some more past that area, before trimming the end.

The new end that was left by adding the new shuttle thread, is now being worked under the chain.

Here you can see both of the thread ends sticking out of the new ring and chain. When more tatting has been done past that area, give the old ends a firm tug before trimming them off, to make sure the all the tatting is firmly in place.

6 comments:

Sarah said...

I wish you'd posted this earlier :) I had a problem with my tatting last night and employed a similar solution, but not nearly as efficient. I will keep it in mind for future problems, though!
~Sarah

Marty said...

Thanks. This is generally how I add new thread, but sometimes I get the wrong thread in the right place. I hope you don't mind that I've printed this piece of your blog and tucked it into my "techniques" folder.

Gina said...

This is how I add a new thread too although I often do the weavers knot to avoid slippage, but I hide the ends in the same way. Nice tutorial!
:-) Gina

Marilee Rockley said...

Thank you all, I am happy if my little tutorials help anyone.

Art by JoyMac said...

Just came across this too...many thanks for this super lesson
Hugs
Joy

N. Maria said...

Tatting tutorials never get old. Thank you, Marliee!