Hairpin lace and tatting

I started to play around with hairpin lace this past week. I have played before but never got anything but a few tiny strips done, but I never did anything with them. I still have one in my tatting supplies somewhere. I will have to dig that out at some point. I did this little piece last night. I have a couple other pieces on hairpin looms but I put those aside to play with this. I do love to play.

This piece has tatting added around the hairpin lace section. I am not really totally happy with how this is turning out. See the gap in the section of the hairpin. That gap is where the sides should be joined so that they look seamless. Well, it doesn't. I played around with the join longer then it took me to do the piece of hairpin lace and the tatting. I just couldn't seem to get something right, or maybe it was the hairpin lace piece not being just right. I think I will have to do a lot more playing before I get this one right.

As for the tatted section, yuck. Way too many mistakes. The double stitches are not all formed right. Granted this is cheap thread, just some of that kind you can buy at Wally World. So it is not the best for tatting with, but still I should have been able to do much better then this. Some of the chains have tiny gaps next to the rings, as I said all the double stitches are not as good as they should be, and the picots, oh the picots, such a mess in sizes. Then again, I have not picked up my shuttles for over a year. I have just been loom knitting and crocheting with yarn. On most of the looms I use a double strand of worsted weight yarn, so bouncing suddenly to tiny size 10 thread is quite a leap. I will do better with more practice.

Now about that loom knitting. Can you see pieces of hairpin lace or tatting as inserts into a loomed piece, or maybe both. Do a strip of hairpin lace, tat around it and attach it to a loomed section as an insert. Oh that would be way cool, but that's for the future. I first need to be able to do this correctly. I need a tutorial book. I need to first get to storage to check out what I may already have. Online sucks (sorry folks), for tutorials that take you very far with hairpin.