Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Hiding Ends

I know that many of you will agree with me here: Hiding ends has been a thorn in my side since I first discovered that I should do more than knot and cut.  

With the needle, I ended up using a bigger needle just so that hiding ends would be easier.  Of course, this produced an even more bulged and floppy piece. 

With the rosewood needle and yarn, I sewed the ends through the caps of the stitches and slid them through a few stitches as well.  

Now, with the shuttle, I'm back to trying every little method that I've tried before. If I thought bringing the ends through my stitches or sewing them through the caps was tough with the needle, it should have been obvious it would be even harder with the shuttle.  Of course, I tried anyway.  No matter what, it seemed as though my stitches became distorted. >.<

Well, I brought my question to GetGlue.com (I'm hooked...) and someone said they use the Magic Thread trick.  I've known about this trick for so long --even had some pre-cut threads from a very generous woman that were just sitting around in pill bottles in my tatting cubby.  I never tried it, though!  I looked it up yet again and realized that I'd done the same thing with floss threaders, though, so had at it with both ways.  Floss threaders are stiffer and make closing rings feel a bit funny, but works like a charm (as long as I have a jar opener handy).  The thread works the same, but without the added funkiness to closing rings.

A part of me still thinks that the ends will somehow come loose right away so I'd still prefer to find a way of sewing in that works for me, but this whole hiding ends fiasco has kept me away from tatting long enough (No, really... it's so daunting to me that I think about it before I even think about starting and it's kept me away from many patterns as well as just tatting in general).  

Well, that's all.  No pictures today as I only have one and plan on putting that up over at my other blog with more rambling!  :-)

Happy tatting to all!

♥,
Stephanie Grace

2 comments:

  1. I feel your pain. I'm not a fan of hiding ends either. But, they have gotten easier with my discovery of needles that are "self threading" and also I found these little needles that have unusually large eyes while still being thin themselves. I will admit though, if it's a piece that I don't particularly "care about" I will just cut and glue it.

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  2. When I learnt to tat, 30 years ago, the accepted method of finishing off was to oversew the ends with a matching thread, or a split tatting thread. That meant you had to choose one side of the piece as the 'wrong' side and try to remember to finish all rounds on the same side! The ends were in no way hidden. So I think sewing them in and out of the stitches is a breeze compared to that. You do need the right needle, as Jess points out. Too often a needle with an eye big enough to thread is too big to go through the tatting well. But hey, don't get paralysed by the thought of hiding ends, that would be a shame!!

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