So as I was tatting my first table cloth my friend was watching me. I tried to talk her into learning how to tat but since she has too many other interests I was not able to force my will on her. She really loved the cloth I was making for my father and she talked me into making her one.
Now I had no pattern for the one I made for my father so as I was working it I could see many things I could have done differently. My father’s was way too full for one thing so I knew that the next one would be smaller and not take as much time. It is so hard to set a price on that kind of work but it was settled that I would let my friend know how long I worked on it and she would pay me accordingly. I can’t say how much thread it took. I am sorry to say I did not keep track of that but it did take me a little over 200 hours of time to make it. I had a stop watch that I would start when I sat down and stop when I got up. I kept the times written in a log and added them when the cloth was complete. Not completely accurate but close enough.
I live in North Carolina where textiles used to be a way of life and so I had been able to buy thread in bulk that is one reason I have no idea how much it took. I never thought I would be making another one when I started my first and when I worked on my second I really had not planned on making three more but I have and I still can’t tell you how much thread it took.
I can tell you that the first two I made with size 20 thread and the other three were size 10 thread, which goes faster but I really do like size 20 or 30 better.
I used the same method of shaping the second as the first. My husband had gotten me a very large piece of thick cardboard. Large enough to drawl a sixty inch circle on. He took a yard stick and drove a nail in the end of it and also drilled holes about every six inches so that I could put the nail into the center of the cardboard and a pencil into the holes and make circles so that I could pin the cloth on the cardboard with t-pins and see how large it was getting also I pressed it as I went to help shape it.
I also used safety pins every ten patterns to help it seem faster. You see getting from one pin to the next was faster than completing a round especially as they got bigger.
