I first thought of the Tatting Toolbox on my lunch break at a previous job. My mom, an avid tatter, mentioned that her handmade fabric tatting bag sewn ten years prior was wearing out. So, with my 3D printer and CAD software, I designed a new way for her to organize her tatting shuttles and other tools.

Designing the base

First prototype

The first prototype (pictured, with the red on top) wasn’t much more than a block with slots of varying sizes. I borrowed one of each of the commonly available sizes of shuttles my mom has, and fit them into a relatively tidy grid. The shuttle slots are tapered inward like wine glasses, to reduce wear on the shuttles. Shuttle tips are delicate, so I shaped the slots so the weight of the shuttle rests on its edges.

I also added a slot for a picot gauge in one corner. This is a flat, card-shaped tool with steps cut into one side to allow a tatter to correctly and consistently size loops.

While showing the first prototype to my mom, I marked it up with ideas and revisions, including:

• Moving the picot gauge slot to the short side, and making it the full length of that side
• Adding six small circular slots for crochet hooks or tatting needles
• My first idea for how to add a handle, similar to an Easter egg basket
• Debossing my logo onto the long side

Second prototype

The second prototype had what became the default slot configuration for the Tatting Toolbox, with one small change. The Handy Hands Ultimate Tatting Gauge, while popular, isn’t the only commonly used picot gauge. I made the picot gauge slot longer, to allow tatters to store both the Handy Hands gauge as well as pieces from the Clover Picot Gauge Set or other similar sets of loose single-size gauges. However, I quickly discovered that single-size gauges fall sideways into the slot. I solved this problem by adding a divider, so that one half is perfectly sized for the Handy Hands gauge and the other can safely hold the rest.

Designing the lid

My basket handle idea didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped, unfortunately, and proved to be too complex. But, inspiration struck while I was browsing a thrift store. I found a box with a two-piece lid, hinged on either side… sort of like a toolbox or tackle box. This was the origin of not just the clamshell-style lid, but the name of the Tatting Toolbox as well.

Once I designed the lid, it proved to be trickier to actually make it than I expected. With a hollow shell and one half of the handle on each side, it wasn’t the easiest to 3D print. I could either have a rough finish on the outside of the lid (printed with the handle upward), or a lot of waste plastic. This waste comes from the supports my 3D printer uses to hold up overhanging parts of a print (printed with the handle on the bottom). I settled on printing it with the handle on the bottom for a better exterior finish.

It was a choice between two equally disappointing options, though, and either way, I ran into problems:

This is when I learned about thermodynamics and adhesion. In the image above with the yellow lids, the lid on the right is one that came out fine. On the left, the upper side of the lid didn’t stick to the supports underneath it and peeled up mid-print. This caused the extruder to press into the surface, leaving it rough and uneven. The same result is more visible in the image of the pink and gold Tatting Toolbox. For every good lid, I got at least one bad one, and I had no idea how to fix it.

While I tested and brainstormed ideas, I shifted gears to develop other areas of the design.

Adding magnets

I added magnets in the base of the handle to give it a nice ‘snap’ whenever the lid closed. Having not worked with magnets much before, I had no idea how weak or strong they would be. So, the magnets I chose were very undersized at first (3mm x 1mm).

As soon as I made my first test pair of lids, I knew I needed stronger magnets. I upgraded them to 6mm x 3mm, and was much happier with how they worked.

However, I wasn’t happy with the appearance that superglue gave the surrounding plastic. I was stumped on what to do about that until I read this post on Prusa’s blog. It highlighted using a feature built into the software for my 3D printers to pause mid-print, allowing us to embed hex nuts (and magnets!) into parts, and add reusable support blocks.

So, in effect, that blog post fixed the two huge problems I had with the design of the lids.

Improving the design

The magnets

I recessed the magnet holes into the handles and sealed them in, hiding them from view. When printing, I used the pause feature to put a dab of superglue in each hole, stick in a magnet, then resume printing. The printer then covers up the magnet, hiding it completely. It’s a bit like hiding a lucky coin in a cake. Each pair of lids now has fully enclosed, hidden magnets that give it a nice, satisfying ‘snap’ when closing.

Reusable support blocks

The reusable support blocks took a bit more thinking. I’ve never liked wasting plastic when 3D printing, so I usually design my products to use little to no supports. These lids made that impossible, though, so I was stuck until the blog post from Prusa gave me an epiphany.

I designed blocks to fit in the empty space inside the lid, and printed them out of TPU. TPU is another plastic with a higher melting point than PLA, and therefore PLA won’t fuse to it when printing. Excited and optimistic, I tried them out with my next lid prototype. I discovered that I needed to add a layer of glue stick to the top of the support blocks, both to help the PLA stay stuck down to the TPU and to help it release once done. After that, though, it’s been smooth sailing for the lids ever since.

Redesigning the handle

The next update to the lids was making the lid handles more comfortable to hold and easier to open. It previously had a boxy cross-section, and no way to easily pull them apart once the lids closed.

Tabs came first, styled after a kiss lock on purses, and that alone drastically improved the lids. Then I rounded all the edges, softening the handle into a circular cross-section. This made it far more comfortable to hold and carry.

Improving the hinges

Admittedly, I wouldn’t have discovered this problem until I started shipping my Tatting Toolbox out to customers. A few lids broke in transit, and all of them where the hinge tabs extend down to meet the base. I thought I had reinforced the tabs enough, but I looked at that part of the design again to make it better. A single pill-shaped tab became much larger, and I haven’t had any reports of shipping damage since.

While I was at it, I also implemented a few other changes and feature requests based on customer feedback.

Customer feedback and requests

After sending a few Toolboxes to my customers, I received lots of good feedback from them on how to improve the design and add more features. Rather than make one model with the proverbial kitchen sink of features, I spun it off into three separate models:

• The Lark’s Head: the base model, with just the standard feature set
• The Mignonette: mid-tier, which adds rings for a tatter to add a strap like a purse
• The Empress: the premium model, with strap rings and a slide-off storage compartment

Moving the logo

A few customers commented that my logo on the longer side of the base was hidden with the lid open. Moving it to the short side not only makes my branding more visible, but it also leaves the larger side open if I ever want to add custom graphics such as a convention logo or monogrammed initials. This also allows me to do limited edition Tatting Toolbox models, adding unique graphics to the sides.

Strap rings

One of my beta testers mentioned that she would love a way to carry it around like a tiny purse, with a strap over her shoulder. Since I definitely wouldn’t trust tiny plastic pegs to hold the weight of a full Toolbox, I played around with several different ideas for how to make a Toolbox strap-capable without inconveniencing someone who didn’t want to add a strap. In the end, I decided to add small blocks on either side and embed a metal ring just like I do with the magnets. The printer goes up to a point and pauses, I insert the rings, then it continues and “traps” the ring in place.

I ran into a slight challenge with adding the rings, since it was hard to keep them from falling out before the printer could trap them. I didn’t feel like standing there holding them in place until that happened, and all the jostling and movement the 3D printer makes just by running was rattling the rings loose very easily.

The solution was another reusable support block, this time a pair of narrow towers. I set these next to the Toolbox base, after adding the rings. They hold the rings flat and keep them from falling out, and magnets in the bottom of each tower keep them from rattling loose since the 3D printer’s build plate is magnetic.

Scissors slots

My mom and a few of my other beta testers placed small pairs of craft scissors into one of the small shuttle slots. As a result, I chose to modify the two center slots of the set of six to better accommodate scissors. Instead of having a rectangular slot that tapers inward, I replaced both slots with ovals that extend straight down. One slot extends all the way to the bottom of the base, and the other slot only goes 2/3 of the way down, to hold sewing needle cases at a comfortable height.

Bottom drawer

The latest feature I’ve added to the Tatting Toolbox based on customer feedback is a slide-off drawer that attaches to the bottom of the Toolbox base. While there is room inside the lid for a ball of thread and work in progress, a separate storage drawer keeps work from getting snagged on other shuttles and hooks, tangled with other threads, or possibly lost.

The drawer also has a set of magnets in it to ‘snap’ it into place, preventing it from sliding off unexpectedly. It’s deep enough for smaller balls of thread or several shuttles, and should be able to hold most sanely-sized work without issue.