The best part about tatting is if you're a creative person you can design your own patterns and you can make anything you want.

If you can draw, you can tat it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Heather Boustead and I'm a tatter.

And the reason why I like to tat is thanks to my mother when I was 12 years old she took me to an elderly lady in my hometown that tried to teach me to tat.

And unfortunately I was not successful.

It took me another 15 years to find somebody that would teach me how to tat.

And I learned to tat at the Iowa State Fair.

The lady that actually taught me to tat back in 1998 at the State Fair, she is the designer of the denim shirt with the three elephants on it.

And she did a fabulous job.

She was a tatting genius.

And we do miss her.

Her name was Esther Miller.

She was known across the globe for what she could do with a tatting shuttle.

Heather: Today we're going to talk about tatting and it's a craft of tying knots and making them join together to make creative things.

So one of them would be, an idea would be a clutch purse.

A lot of us remember when our grandmothers carried hankies, there was always tatting on the edge of a hanky.

One more thing that you always saw in someone's home was a tatted doily.

And doilies a lot of times are made in rounds or they are made in a motif.

So this particular example is a six-sided motif.

♪♪ Heather: And then this other example is a three-sided motif that is used to create the doily.

What you'll need are just some very simple things.

You'll need a shuttle of some form.

You can usually find these at any type of a crafting store.

You'll need a crochet hook, some scissors and some cotton thread.

Typically to start with you'd want at least size 10 or larger thread so you can see the knots that you're going to be tying.

Heather: We're going to make this example.

And this has been done in yarn.

But we're going to use that only for demonstration purposes today and also this large shuttle so that you can see what we're doing.

And we're going to show you how to wind the shuttle and then how to create a chain and then a ring.

And if you look in our example, the green in a chain that connects to a ring and then there is another chain that connects to a ring.

Heather: This is very simple.

We're going to walk the thread onto the shuttle.

And this is how easy it is.

♪♪ Heather: So we have an easier time of seeing the transition of the flip of the stitches because this is all about muscle movement, repetition and rhythm.

So, once we have our knot tied between our two pieces of thread, we're going to take this, the ball thread, and we're going to wrap it over the top of our middle and ring finger and then twist it around our pinky finger.

♪♪ Heather: And we're going to hold our shuttle between our thumb and our index finger and we're going to leave somewhere around six to seven inches.

♪♪ Heather: And we want the thread on the shuttle to come off away from our body so that when we tat it just flows a little bit better.

We're going to go under and then over the working space thread right here with the shuttle, but we're never going to let go of the shuttle.

So the shuttle is going to slide up against the green thread.

So, first of all, to go under we're going to lift up on this thread, take the shuttle underneath -- ♪♪ Heather: -- and it just slides underneath that index finger.

And then we're going to pull it back over the top of the green thread.

We're going to release the orange thread and we're going to pull this shuttle parallel to our body but away from the working space and then we're going to relax our left hand so that that knot turns green.

And this is the first half of the half stitch.

Heather: So the second half we're going to go over the green thread with the shuttle and then back under and pull through.

So we're going to press down on the thread with our right hand so the orange thread goes down, we're going to go over the top, we don't let go of the shuttle, then we're going to pull it back underneath that green thread.

We're going to relax that left hand as we pull away with the shuttle and watch that transfer of that second half of the knot.

Heather: So here you have a knot and it looks like a pair of pants.

There is a little waistband and two legs.

♪♪ Heather: So if for some reason your thread isn't green or isn't the color on the ball, you've not made the transition, meaning you just went like this.

So with that, it's just a repetition of these two halves of the stitch.

We're going to go under, over and pull it down, over then under and pull it together.

Heather: So what we'll do now is we'll make a ring.

So same idea, only what you're going to do is you're going to wrap this shuttle thread and you're going to hold it.

So we're going to hold it right there and you're going to pinch.

♪♪ Heather: And then same idea, you're going to go underneath the working space thread.

So you're going to pull this thread up, the shuttle is going to go through, see I never let go and I'm going to pull it back over the top and here you can't see the transition but there it was.

And we can do that again.

There it was.

♪♪ Heather: And it should slide down the shuttle thread.

So the second half of the stitch we're going to go over and then remember we're going to pull tight with this left hand.

So there is a bit of repetition here to get that motion.

So you'll continue to make those half stitches, the first half and the second half, and then as you go you can always check to make sure everything is going as planned because this thread will get smaller so you're going to have to pull it from the shuttle.

You'll unwind your shuttle and create a few more stitches, first half, second half.

♪♪ Heather: And then when you get ready to close this ring -- ♪♪ Heather: -- you're just going to pull the shuttle thread -- ♪♪ Heather: -- and the two ends are going to meet.

So there's your ring and your chain.

♪♪ Heather: So what you can do next is you can just continue on with a chain.

Heather: So the next steps for you to start your tatting adventure, look for somebody to mentor you, pick out some projects that are very simple so that you can have success and enjoy your journey with tatting.

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