French knot
ImproverFlowers & knots
Wrap the thread around the needle and pull through to leave a neat raised knot. Flower centres, berries, freckles — the little dots of embroidery.
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What it is
A French knot is a small raised bead of thread made by wrapping the floss around the needle and pulling it down onto the fabric. It has a reputation for being impossible, and almost all of that comes down to two things nobody mentions: which hand holds the tension, and the fact that the needle must not go back into the hole it came out of.
How to work it
- Come up where you want the knot to sit.
- Hold the thread taut with your non-needle hand, about 5 cm from the fabric, and keep holding it until the very end.
- Wrap the thread around the needle twice. Two wraps. More wraps make a sausage, not a bigger knot.
- Put the needle point down a thread’s width AWAY from where it came up — never back into the same hole, which is what makes the knot vanish through to the back.
- Slide the wraps down the needle until they sit on the fabric, still keeping the thread taut.
- Pull the needle through slowly, letting the tension out only as the last of the thread passes.
What it is good for
- Flower centres, berries, blossom, freckles, eyes.
- Texture in a mass — a drift of knots reads as gravel, moss or wool.
- Dotting an i in stitched lettering.
What goes wrong
- Going back down the same hole. This is the classic failure and it pulls the whole knot through.
- Letting go of the tension while pulling through — the wraps collapse into a nest.
- Wrapping three, four or five times to get a bigger knot. Use more strands instead; the knot stays tight and just gets fatter.
By the numbers
- Largest knot
- 3.5 mmpast this it is a bullion, not a knot
- Wraps round the needle
- 2.3two for a small knot, a third to bulk out a big one
- Stitches in this example
- 3counted from the drawing above, not estimated
- Floss it would take
- 29 cmworking thread to cut, at 2 strands
Knots are capped at 3.5 mm because a real one cannot get bigger — past that it is a bullion, a different stitch. Size comes from the strand count, and the number of wraps the 3D view winds is the same number the pattern’s thread estimate charges you for.
Watch it worked
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