Iris Niebach presents good strong traditional tatting patterns in her books. She often designs several smaller motifs which she then uses as the basic building block for several large and small doilies and lace pieces. Iris explains that these motifs lets the tatter build the piece "vertically" and reduces the number of rounds needed for larger pieces. It is a very intriguing concept.

She is definitely a traditional tatter but she has also fully embraced and incorporated the modern tatting techniques such as block tatting, split rings, self-closing mock rings and josephine rings in her designs. The daintiness of her lace pieces are enhance often by the use of many picots and decorative picots such as the doubled or triple picot.

All the lace patterns have full page color photos. The easy to read, numbered diagrams are presented mostly in quarter sections. All are paperbound book (approx. 8.5" x 8.5" or 22cm square) includes full color instructions for many techniques such as bi-color block tatting, hiding ends by tatting over the tails, the use of the magic thread and the use of a thread as a space holder to create the inward facing picot.

Iris is endlessly fascinated by tatting and has now published several books. She is a multilingual international teacher having taught tatting in Japan, in Denmark twice, at Palmetto's in South Carolina, at Lacis in Berkeley California. Her books are a good addition to your tatting library.

There are several free patterns posted at her website: https://www.iristatting.com

And here is a lovely pair of earring to challenge you:

https://www.georgiaseitz.com/2007/irisniebachearrings.html