Knot a lot of tatting

by Susan Mikula Campbell
Niagara Wheatfield Tribune, April 3, 2008

Betty Hogan, left, came to the Wheatfield Community Center from Barker to learn how
to do tatting from Judy Bongiovanni, right. (photo by Chuck and Donna Cederman)

Tatting is a kind of knotted lace, used primarily for trimming that young women used to learn at their mother’s or grandmother’s knee.

Mention tatting in this day of high speed Internet and fast food, and the reaction is usually a blank look and a “What?”

Twenty-two women from all over Niagara County were interested enough in this old-time handiwork to come to the Wheatfield Community Center on Saturdays this month to learn how to do tatting from Judy Bongiovanni of Niagara Falls.

I figured, if grandma used to do it, how hard could it be? Grandma, apparently, didn’t have fingers that turned into all thumbs, but the three-session course even for the digitally challenged, has turned out to be a light-hearted, chatty affair.

Elaine Timm of the Historical Society of North German Settlements (Das Haus Museum) organized the current classes and already has eight people on a waiting list for a class she hopes to hold in the fall. Interest has been so strong among those already in the course, she’s also considering forming a tatting group, which would meet regularly to practice tatting and share ideas.

“I think people are interested in learning the crafts that grandma used to do,” Timm said. “It’s like it skipped a generation kind of thing.”

Bongiovanni, a former Niagara County Office for the Aging employee, didn’t start tatting herself until 2000, after she retired.

“It was something I always wanted to know how to do and never had the time to learn,” she said.

She’s been teaching for about three years, both in Niagara Falls and at the Amherst Museum.

Tatting is not something that can easily be learned from a book. Even in person, it can be daunting. You wind up with a cat’s cradle of thread on one hand and a shuttle bearing a bobbin of thread in the other.

“We’re not going to get to a tablecloth today,” Bongiovanni quips at the first class. “Those of you who are saying, ‘I’m just tying a knot,’ you are, but it’s a particular kind of knot and you have to do it correctly.”

She patiently explains, demonstrates and re-explains and re-demonstrates how to hold the thread, wield the small plastic shuttle and the most important skill, how to flip the knot. Absolutely everybody feels awkward at first, she assures those of us with too many thumbs. She did herself.

“This makes you really appreciate those hankies you had when you were a kid,” one woman moans.

Joanne Sentman of Wheatfield sets a neat row of knots that causes instant envy. She’d learned how to do tatting before, she confesses.

“I couldn’t remember how to do it,” she said. “I have a lot of my grandmother’s tatting and I want to be able to take it and put it onto something.”

Cindy Behm comes all the way from Lockport for the class.

“I always wanted to learn how to do tatting,” she said. “I think it’s really pretty.”

The Wheatfield class is sponsored by the Historical Society of North German Settlements in Western New York with funding from Arts Niagara Decentralization Program, New York State Council on the Arts.

Anyone interested in learning more about grandma’s skills in lace making, including tatting, can stop in at the lace making seminar to be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. June 7 at the Amherst Museum. General admission of $5 includes a lecture, vendors and hands-on try it stations. Beginner classes on tatting, bobbin lace, lace knitting and Romanian lace will be offered for an additional fee in the afternoon.