There was a local quilt show here in Grand Junction, CO that I learned about and on the list of vendors was “Tied in Knots Tatting”. So I just HAD to go to meet this mystery (to me) tatter.

I WAS BLOWN AWAY by the creativity and large amount of tatting by Dianne Dayhoff from Debeque, Colorado. In addition to that, she was a lovely woman to talk to. She said that she doesn’t work from patterns. But she did admit that she looks at pieces and patterns on the internet and adds components of those designs into her tatting. She just starts to tat and ends up with beautiful work.

The other thing that I was interested in was her prices for her pieces. She asks for and gets a pretty good price for her work….closer to ‘ART’ prices than ‘Craft’ prices. Although not nearly enough for the time and talent she puts into each piece, it was certainly gratifying to see that her work was in the ‘art’ range. I thanked her for promoting tatting as an artform. She said that she prices her doilies at about $7 per square inch. A ca. 12 inch round doily was in the $100+ range (if I remember right). Even her earrings were priced minimally $18.

Dianne says that she vends at one craft show a month, most are in western Colorado close to her hometown of Debeque. The farthest she goes is Durango area because she has relatives/friend there for the excuse to go that far.

She uses beads in her work but just like me, hates them on here shuttle thread. All beads were added-in on joins.

Her work was varied: crosses, doilies, jewelry (she likes to incorporate costume jewelry she finds into her work as components), gift boxes, masks, ankle and wrist bands, etc.

We discussed ‘split rings’…..she does do them, but doesn’t like them (ARGH!) I’d like to hang out with her but Dianne says she is a very singular tatter and has no interest in joining a tatting club (that I would like to start!). I would like the chance to change her mind about split rings!

Dianne does have a FB page but says that she wants to disable it but doesn’t know how. She only sells at shows and lives a relatively ‘social media-free’ lifestyle.

A while back I was gifted by a cousin-in-law with this antique abalone tatting shuttle. My CIL is a professional jeweler in Iowa City, Iowa (She is my idol–I want to be a jeweler when I grow up!) When I pressed her about where this shuttle came from she said that it was in the jewelry shop’s storage items from estate purchases and buying out other jewelry stores stock. She could not shed any more light on the provenance of this beauty.

I was really intrigued by the fact that it was still attached to the original packaging material. I’m assuming that the missing portion of the cardboard base was where the price of the shuttle was. I’m bummed that this historical detail is missing.

The other unique thing about this abalone tatting shuttle is the fact that is includes a steel point/pick that is attached/riveted to the back blade of the shuttle.

After going on the first ever Tat Sea 2022 Tatting Cruise, I (and I think everyone else) was inspired by one of the cruise-goer’s beautiful tatted/beaded necklaces and earrings.  I will have to profess that I hate working with beads (especially on my shuttle thread) but now really want some tatted, glizty jewelry.  

I think this might be the thread for me.  It tats up quite well.  You have to be a bit careful when making joins that you grab all of the thread and not just a portion to bring up through the picot join as it easily splits.  But even though I tat quite tightly (stitch & ring tension), the rings closed quite nicely for me.

I found this thread in a quilt shop in Grand Junction, CO.

I need to go back and buy the silver and gold ones.

I found these ‘Magic Pins’ in a quilt shop here in my new hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado.  I am very hopeful that they will help prevent the hurts my right hand, middle finger gets when pushing in regular pins to a cardboard base to block my tatting.  Last time I blocked about a dozen pieces and my finger hurt for over a week. My husband forbade me showing off my owwie to everyone (it was my middle finger!). Sometimes I wear a thimble when pushing in pins to block my tatting. But it seems that the thimble impedes my progress a bit, especially when using a large number of pins.

Then I went to the Quilt Show here in Grand Junction, CO and found these ‘Pretty Pins’. I think that these later pins might be kinder to my finger than the ‘Magic Pins’. But the heads may get in the way of one another if the piece I’m blocking needs a whole bunch of pins close together.

I was at Walmart the other day and noticed these tweezers. The ‘Point Tweezers’ would work great for opening-closed-rings. I have no use for the ‘slant’ ones in my work. I didn’t buy them because I already have tweezers in my tatting bag that I love and use (all too frequently) for repairing a mistake. (I shall have to take a pictures of the tweezers I use for a future entry.)