Dragon Tatting
Shortly after I discovered tatting I saw Anne Bruvold’s Minor Norwegian Dragon pattern, and making it became my tatting goal. After my little refresher with the tatted heart I finally made my dragon.
It took a lot of frantic googling, working out how to needle tat a pattern written for shuttle tatting, trial and error and unpicking, but I finished it. I learned a lot by challenging myself and going for a much more complicated pattern than I’d done before and I can see the improvement between where I started and finished.
I only recently learned the value of blocking projects after being stubborn for years and thinking it was too much work. The dragon really benefited from blocking and it covered up all my little mistakes and smoothed out any twists.
I used Lizbeth size 3 tatting thread in Girly Girl (colour #174) for this project. I really like how smooth this thread feels to tat with, and I love the colours. I’m now fighting the urge to make dragons in every colour of thread I have
I so need to know how to needle tat a shuttle pattern. I was looking to see if anyone else had needle tatted this pattern before I tackled it. Do you have any pointers for me, I would really appreciate it. Yours looks beautiful.
Thanks! It’s actually not too bad to convert them. I didn’t have to do anything specific for this as I just followed the diagram. In general, you usually can follow a pattern and just ignore anything where it mentions shuttles/balls. I did find the joins on the head a little fiddly to do, but I’m not sure if that was because I used a needle instead (one day I’ll shuttle tat this one to find out)