What I have learned about French Knots

Today, when I was squeezing yet one more long-stemmed French Knot into a smallish corner of a palm-sized piece, it occurred to me that I ought to write about knots before I forget everything I've learned!  This concern for my memory of both the important and the unimportant came about when it took me an entire day to remember the name of the very common Feather Stitch!  Celebrating birthdays is suddenly not such a celebratory moment.

I have learned that knots are tricky and unforgiving.  I get one chance at them, and if I garble the line of thread at any point, I don't have the opportunity to back out of the mess and start over.  My options are:  (a) cut it out c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y and start over; (b) sew another stitch (a bigger knot, or a satin stitch shape) on top of it in a fatter thread until the unfortunate knotted mess is completely covered up; or (c) come up with a creative appliqué.  Usually I opt for (a), though I can point out several cover-ups that actually changed the direction of the piece entirely!  I think my Muse is often impatient with me and resorts to tangling the threads I am using until I am forced to stop and listen to her.

Yes, another digression.

French Knots have no more personality than a dial tone when they stand by themselves, but in a cluster, or stretched across a space, they can have presence and even textural importance.  I love texture, so I am prone to wrap the needle many times, giving me a large, sometimes shaggy knot.  Jacqueline Enthoven, however, says a French Knot should be wrapped only one time around the needle.  If I want a larger knot, she continues, I should simply double the thread.  Or treble, it would follow.  So, the next thing I learned about French Knots is that when I double the thread and wrap the needle only once, the shape of the knot is tidy and it does not fall over to one side.  It is possible that the multiple-wraps leave the stitch exhausted under the weight of all those loops and they fall gasping to one side the way Victorian ladies took to their fainting couches.

French Knots have a habit of disappearing when I do not move my needle over just slightly as I enter the fabric from the right side to carry the thread to the back.  In fact, they simply pop right through the little hole they sit above and I'm left looking at the place where the knot was and wondering where my stitch has gone!

Most fortunately, French Knots play well with other stitches.  Stitches that make long, winding lines across the linen and leave open pockets in the process cry out for companionable French Knots to join them.   Look at the Herringbone stitch.  In other embroiderers' worlds, they are nicely even and controlled little children.  In my world, they run, leap, curl and change shapes as they cavort across the linen:

This rather chubby Cretan Stitch benefits from a French Knot in its house-shaped center:

Buttonhole stitches, particularly uneven ones, provide interesting "cubby holes" for the knots, and they almost look like cells as seen under a microscope when multiple rows are combined.  Square (or Open) Chain stitches read the same way:

Small, tightly-made knots may be cradled in the curve of Feather or Fly Stitch, or decorate the ends, like some of the more delicate weeds in my garden:

Here the knot has been used as a substitution for the terminating straight stitch normally found at one end of a Detached Chain stitch:

These slightly open Detached Chain stitches also use the knot as a tacking stitch:

Two lines of Buttonhole stitches have been "dotted" with French Knots in contrast colors:

In a pinch, French Knots can appliqué a shape to a ground fabric with delightful results,

and their high-texture makes for interesting filling stitches--tree foliage is well-represented in variegated thread here:

It is even possible to stitch small knots into larger ones.  These below are pale blue perle cotton #8 sewn into the darker perle cotton #3:

By adding a stem to the knot, the lowly French Knot becomes a tiny flower:

With the help of metallic thread, the knot can have loops added to it, as well (it is tension that makes this work, tension and the patience of Job):

The long-stemmed version can be turned into an edging or border by alternating the direction of the stem and knot, as in the pale blue row that slopes to the right,

and when clustered tightly together can give the appearance of small colonies of fungi or field flowers:

There are so many more ways to use French Knots-- and this is the simplest of all the knots.

I have also learned how lovely the complicated knots can be, but I believe that will wait for another day and another pot of tea.  Right now, I have a huge box of samplers spread across a table in the studio, and rather than putting them away, I want to go and sit with them and enjoy remembering the times I made them.  Stitched samplers can be ever so entertaining!