Star Tatting.—The material for this kind of work is bobbin, such as is generally used for children’s caps. You have only to work six scollops and draw them up close, so as to form a star. When made with precision and regularity, they present a neat appearance. Star tatting is well adapted for trimmings to a great many articles of apparel and ornament.
Common Tatting Edging.—Make the loops, and work the first stitch as in the first pattern; then work twenty stitches the same way to form the scollop. When it is finished, you must draw up the thread tight, and then commence another. If it has been properly done, the scollop will draw freely.
CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
In bringing the Ladies’ Work-Table Book to a close, we cannot persuade ourselves to dismiss the subject, without a word or two to our fair friends, as to the use, necessary to be made, of all the useful or ornamental accomplishments their circumstances and situations may enable them to acquire. We should never, for one moment, suffer the utile to be absent from our thoughts: she who has no definite aim in what she does, can never have any good ground of hope, that, in her progress through life, she can attain to excellence.
These remarks apply principally to that large class, who are dependent upon exertion of some kind, for the means of comfort and respectability, in their respective stations. But, as those ladies, whose circumstances render a practical acquaintance with the arts here treated of, a matter of indifference, a knowledge of them is, by no means, unnecessary. In many ways indeed, a lady, blessed with affluence, may render an acquaintance with the details of needlework extensively useful.
It is often the case that young persons are engaged in families, whose education has been, from some cause or other, lamentably neglected. In those cases, the lady who feels her obligations, and is actuated by a true Christian spirit, will consider herself as standing in the place of a mother to her humble dependents; and, under a deep sense of her high responsibilities, will endeavor to improve, and fit them, by suitable and kindly-imparted instructions, for the proper discharge of the duties of that station, which it may be presumed they will in after days be called upon to fill. In this case, how useful will the kind and careful mistress find a knowledge of that art, which teaches the proper method of making those articles of dress which are so essential to every family who, however humble, are desirous of securing the respect of the wise and the good, by judicious economy, and a neat and respectable appearance.