How to Make a French Knot

The French Knot is a very common embroidery stitch. It can be used in a number of ways. It can even be used to quilt several layers together. It can be used in combination with other stitches, it can be used as a dense filling stitch, as a more open filling stitch, and even as a little bit of a shadow. It's worth learning how to use it, because it really can add impact to your art quilt.

The different fabrics or different yarns that you can use are embroidery floss, cotton, wool, even torn strips of fabric. This is embroidery floss, six strand, three strand, one strand. This is a wool knitting yarn, as is this. This is a fine little cotton thread that's strange and really quite nice little dot there. This is torn pieces of fabric, making a furry, fat little guy.

This is cut netting, tulle netting that can make some really interesting ones, and this is even cut plastic bags from the grocery store, making interesting variegated little pieces. To do a French Knot, you want to consider using a chenille needle. A chenille needle is fairly large in size, but what makes it unique is the large eye. It makes handling the different weights of thread much easier. To do a French Knot, you merely come up through your fabric from the back, and wrap around your needle.

Purists think you can only wrap once but others like myself can wrap two times. You place it through the fabric and pull it through gently, and you have a nice little knot. If you want a much larger knot, you can use another wrap, or you can use several strands of your thread to make a much larger knot. So if you want to use the French Knot in your work, whether it's as a dense filling like this, or in combination with other stitches like this, or as just loose filling, consider the French Knot in your next piece.