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How To Make a French Knot

french knot, embroidery, sewing

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sewing instructions

Download the PDF version of these instructions

step1

french knot, embroidery

        To begin, bring your needle up through the fabric. Your embroidery floss will need to be knotted on the backside so that you can pull your floss tight. Hold the floss up, and off to the left, with your left hand, and hold the needle with your right hand so that it is pointing back to the left at the floss. Or, if you are left handed, do the reverse of this. See the photo to the right.

step2

        Then proceed to tightly loop the floss once around the end of the needle. Then loop the floss around the needle a second time, again pulling the floss tight with your left hand. The more loops you add, the bigger the knot will be, but in general, we stop at two loops.
 

french knot, embroidery

french knot, embroidery stitches

step3

        Keep the floss pulled tight around the needle with your left hand, and carefully poke the end of the needle down through the fabric exactly at, or close to, where you first came up. While continuing to hold the floss tight around the needle with your left hand, move your right hand under the fabric and pull your needle slowly through.
 

french knot, embroidery

french knot, embroidery stitches

step4

        As soon as the needle is all the way through the fabric, you can let go of the floss with your left hand. Then slowly pull the floss all the way through and your knot will form. Pull the floss snugly tight, and your knot is complete!
 

french knot, embroidery

french knot, embroidery

        The French knot can be tricky to learn at first, but once you master it, it’s really quite easy and creates cute tiny dots. It can be used as a great embellishment in so many different embroidery projects!
 

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