Learning Filet Tatting with Mandatory

If you compare my latest tatting of this project (top image) to my first (lower image), you’ll notice that some of the squares are rounded in the latest one. I really want to master this technique, so I challenged myself this time to select the striver position at the corners without referring to Amanda’s chart. As you can see, I made a number of bad choices, but I’m okay with that. I often learn best by trial and error. In examining my errors, Amanda’s excellent instructions finally clicked into place for me. Striver position A is used when no shoelace trick was needed to get the threads into the correct position to proceed. Striver position B is ALWAYS preceded by the shoelace trick which got the threads into the correct position first. Did Amanda tell me this in the tutorial? Yes, she did. But until I took a chance and made the mistakes, it didn’t fully sink in.

Some of you will understand that while I just couldn’t make myself proceed with those horribly large picots in my first effort, I’m content to move forward with this latest effort. The sloppy, large picots would have been just that, sloppy and large. These rounded corners are markers on the learning curve for me as I move forward. I took a chance to test my understanding and learned from it.

The Catherine wheel spider I made up for my grandson (see earlier post) really helped me with the Catherine wheel joins to the tops of the picots. I also switched to Lizbeth size 20 thread and wore a second pair of glasses over my daily ones for some extra magnification as I worked. 

I did struggle some with the modified Catherine wheel joins that created the picots for the next round as I joined to the picots of the previous round. It wasn’t the picot or the join, but the use of the picot gauge. I found it a bit fiddly, but managed pretty well for the first picot, but it kept getting in my way and creating some confusion for me as I tried to form the first half of the double stitch for the successive joins. I finally decided to use my crochet hook and the previous picot as a guide and created the remaining ones in this block without the gauge. They are pretty even (though they don't look it in the picture), so I think it will be okay.

I’m really enjoying learning this technique. Amanda tells me that the next part of the tutorial will contain instructions and samples of some of the different ways you can fill the blocks which I was very excited to hear. If you would like to give this a try, your first step is here. 

Happy tatting!