Wedding Stuff Part 3b, Hankies and mum!

I  learned to tat in he late 1950's from a friend in school. She tells me that we were allowed to tat in our home economics class. I don't remember that, if fact I didn't even remember that she was the one who taught us.

I always had it in my mind that it must of been another of my friends....the real crafty one....I remember to my shame that she gave me a birthday present of two little tubes covered in linen with embroidery on the outside.

I was not impressed...I think I asked her what they were for!

They were meant to be for keeping hair grips in....I think.

I much preferred what my other friends gave, pretty notelets and teen age stuff.....oh how awful of me.

Now I would be so grateful that she took the trouble to make something especially for me.

What I do remember is coming home and telling mum that a friend was going to teach me to tat.

Imagine my surprise when she said that she thought she had a shuttle in her work box.

She never saw her mother use it so we can only assume that it must have been her grandmother...my great grandmother.

She found it and I can now identify it as hard rubber/vulcanite. It doesn't have the Novelty Rubber Company initials on it and I would imagine that it is British  made in the early 1900's.

I can tell that it is rubber as I get the smell of rubber when I rub it briskly.

This was my only shuttle for years and years, until probably the 1970's when I discovered Aero and Milward shuttles.

My mum????

She soon wanted to learn to tat too. People always assumed when they saw us tatting that she had taught me...but not so.

The funny thing was that she had to go out and buy a shuttle to use.

It was this little pink plastic one....

She tatted regularly or the next 40 years.

During that lifetime she only ever possessed three shuttles.

She only ever tatted edgings.

She never as far as I remember tatted
 a chain...I can't find evidence of a chain.

She never tatted with more that the one shuttle and she never tatted a motif.

She knew exactly what she liked to tat and edged endless hankies...which she used...they would go into the washing machine every week.

Sometimes she would tat an edging for a table cloth, or a tray cloth that she had embroidered.

She was still tatting at 89 when she died some 12 years ago. It kept her fingers supple and her mind occupied.

I have her little paper bag that she kept her tatting in,with her shuttles and the tatting that she was working on.

I have given away some of her hankies to special people and have about 12 left...some that she used so often they have holes in the material...but the tatting is perfect.

She really only did two different edgings, variations of the hens and chicks, and tatted in size 60 so good were her eyes.

My two favourite heirloom hankies of hers are...

I prefer the tatting in the second one, it has more definition.

I don't know where she got these hankies from they are heirloom quality.

Not only do we get beautiful hand embroidery...

...but also Drawn Thread Work and fancy filling stitches in he rectangular panel.

So 

What

has

this

all 

got 

to

do

with 

the 

wedding??

Well having given a hankie to daughter,

I thought that it would be nice to give one to daughter in law to be.  To have my son's grandmother represented at the wedding.

He will like that, hope she will too.

I chose one that fulfilled the something old, (made about 15-20 years ago), something new (it is) and something blue.....and this one filled the bill.

Maybe she is sentimental too!

I bet mum taught the angels how to tat!