With which activity is tatting involved?

Making lace that will withstand demands from a variety of uses requires procedures that have withstood tests over centuries. Tatting is a process of loops and knots that allow some flexibility of artistic design, while also allowing the finished product to lie flat and being robust during most uses.

Lace is used in a variety of applications in fashion and in the arts. Often times, lace decorative parts for chairs and sofas are draped across the arms and backs. The small pieces on the arms are often referred to as doilies. Doilies are also flat lace pieces that cover parts of side tables or coffee tables to separate the hard surface from the ceramic or other pieces set on them.

Lace is also used to accentuate parts of clothing, particularly on the arms and legs of clothing. Roaring 20s fashion often included lace as a main part of the bodice of women's flapper dresses.

The art of tatting was historically done by hand, but is largely replaced by machine tattings of lace.