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| Copper wire is a fussy medium for tatting, but the end results are worth
the effort.
Recommended shuttles: Any shuttle with loose tips. The new colored Clover shuttles are loose in their tips. Boye bobbin types. GR8 shuttles. An Aero will work if you manually release the copper from the bobbin, instead of pulling on it. Any open ended shuttle should also work. Wind the wire off the bolt without extra twists. Twists cause kinks, kinks cause the wire to break. Any crease will also cause a weakness in the wire. If you put any tension, such as pulling the wire, it will stretch the wire and cause a weakness in the wire. Walk the shuttle onto the thread. Use reversible pliers (hackle) to hold your bobbin while you walk the copper wire onto the bobbin. GO SLOW. This is paramount, we are not in a race here. Take your time tatting with the shuttle. Transferring or making the flip is obtained with greater success if you slowly draw the shuttle back to you. After making the first ds, you will note that it still takes quite a bit of tension in your ring hand than the shuttle hand to form the stitches. I suggest putting a bandaid or some sort of glove on the tension fingers. Practice. Practice. I left the graphic of the angels large so you can clearly see the details. THERE IS NO RETRO TATTING with cooper wire! Check the pattern, be sure you know what you are doing. Picot gauges: use something that the wire is not going to bite into. What do I do when the wire breaks? Cry. Then take heart. You can usually just snip back to the beginning of the ring and twist on a new section of wire and continue. Optional: You can take a rubber mallet and mash the tatted wire. I am told it tempers the wire. I know that it splays the tatting just a little and makes the tatting look more lacy. |
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