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When you are tatting, many patterns will expect you to join the last piece back to the first piece
to complete the motif. To do this you'll use a technique called a "folded join."
For example, in this pattern, I started with this ring,
made a chain,
made the next ring, chain, ring, chain,
and back, all the way around.
Now I'm getting ready to make the last chain,
and then I'm gonna make one more ring
that will join the first and the previous ring together.
So since I've just finished the ring I'm gonna reverse work and make the next chain.
If you want to try this same pattern, it's simply a ring of 3 ds sep by 3 p,
and then a chain of 3 ds sep by 3 p. Back and forth.
Two picots.
All right. There's my chain.
Now I'm gonna reverse work to make the ring.
That's 3 ds, and I'm gonna make the join to the last ring that I made,
just like I normally would.
Move that out of the way.
There's my second picot.
Now, instead of making a third picot on this ring,
I'm going to join it to the very first ring that I made.
To make the folded join,
I'm going to turn that ring over,
and place it right above my working thread, where I would make a join.
But instead of joining downwards, like a normal join,
I'm going to join upwards, through the picot,
and since I would normally put my shuttle through up,
this time I'm gonna put the shuttle through downwards.
So I'm switching both the direction I'm pulling the crochet hook through,
and the direction I'm pulling the shuttle through.
And then continue tatting the rest of the ring as usual.
There's three double stitches,
Close the ring.
And now when I unfold it,
these two rings are joined together,
and the join between them is nice and flat, it's not twisted at all.
I'm gonna reverse work and make my final chain.
Tighten up my shuttle a little bit, after the ring.
All right. That's the final chain.
Now, I'm going to cut the threads off from the shuttle and the ball,
leaving several inches. I usually like to leave three or four inches of extra thread,
so that I have plenty of room to work with to be able to hide those threads
in the chain later on.
To tie this last chain into the first ring,
I'm gonna pull the chain thread through the first ring,
and then snug it up into the little space in between where the ring ends come together,
and simply make a knot.
Right over left and left over right to secure it.
And then I'm gonna hide those tail ends.
I'll show you how to hide the ends in the next video.
So that is how you make a folded join to complete a motif that doubles back on itself.
Good luck, and happy tatting!