Home
   
 

For many years needleworkers have disagreed over the number of times one should wrap the thread around the needle to form a French knot. After making them by the zillions, I have decided that French knots have only one wrap. There is sound reasoning behind my decision, allow me to explain:

1. A matter of thread control: French knots are supposed to be round. Wrap more than once around the needle and it is nearly impossible to make a round knot. We’ve all done it... Wrap, wrap...WONKY! This method of forming a knot is very hard to control. If you need a larger knot, rather than making more wraps, it is really much easier and comes out more shapely if you simply use a larger needle and more strands of floss or the alternative would be to use a different (but very controllable) knot... See How to Form a Colonial Knot.

2. A matter of mechanics: If you wrap the thread more than once around the needle you are actually making the beginnings of a boullion stitch, which by it’s very nature, wants to lay, like a tiny spring, flat on the fabric’s surface. There are embroideries that use a double-wrap knot, but it stands on end like a spiral, not a plump, round sphere. These embroideries are Chinese and it took master embroiderers to create them. The stitch is the “Chinese Forbidden Stitch.”

3. A matter of knowledge and communicaton: Needlework knowledge is passed from person to person over generations and hundreds of years, much like playing telephone (that game where you pass a secret from person to person and see how it comes out at the end of the line). It would be impossible for the original technique to have made it through all those people and generations without someone’s Aunt Gertie changing it a bit here or there because she thought her way made the knot bigger, faster and good enough!

4. It has been argued by many that actual published books teach us to make French knots with two or more wraps, and they must be correct or they wouldn’t be published. Being an author myself, I can assure you that the content of any given book is only as good as the author’s knowledge (which may have been passed on to said author by Aunt Gertie).

I agree that there are usually several ways of doing any given task, but I also know there is usually one way that works better than most. So, if you want your French knots to be easy to make and uniform in size and shape, my conclusion is that French knots have only one wrap.


Bring the needle up through the fabric at the location you want to make the knot.

Wrap the thread around the needle once. At this point it may only look like half a wrap, but in the next step, the wrap becomes complete.

Insert the needle back into the fabric one or two fabric threads from the original starting point.

The loop around the needle should be loose at this stage.


Push the needle about halfway into the fabric, then pull the thread so the loop is snug around the needle and rests on the fabric surface.

This is the most important part of forming nice knots. The knot is sized around the barrel of the needle, which is how you will get uniform results with every knot.

Keeping a gentle tension on the thread, pull the needle through to finish the knot.

Keeping your thumb over the thread as it enters the fabric will help keep slip knots from forming as the thread is pulled through the fabric.

Once the knot is nice and round and sitting on the fabric surface, release the tension on the thread. Refrain from giving it an extra tug because that will just make the knot too tight or pull it through the fabric. Admire your fine work!