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The French Knot
This is the favorite of favorites I am working on a class right now entirely dedicated to the french not everyone loves those every time I teach everybody wants to spend the entire time after they learned the french not just doing the french not like more more more so this is always fun french not again another way you can vary it to see the number of strands I think it's easiest to learn and make the biggest impact using all six strands so only choose our colors let's use all six I again like two make it not so people have the tendency to think they're french not is super complicated I remember learning from my grandmother but the method that I use is the one that ms park stewart she's amazing and this was this actually ended up making more sense to me than how I learned from my grandmother so again you want to have an appropriate length of thread from your needle I like to put a knot at the end and really the french not comes down to being able to control the tension of the thread as...
it's coming through the fabric you'll see there's a couple of things we'll need to do, which is why I save it until now after we've been through a couple stitches because you're used to working the fabric used to working with the thread so wherever you want you're not to be we're going to come through the fabric fully you're gonna take your thread wrap it around the needle twice the traditional french not is your wrapping around the needle twice and you are keeping the needle close to the fabric so because khun see that close so very close to the fabric of all the way through background twice rapid on the issues I'll show you again I'll finish this one I'll show you again now supposedly you're supposed to put it through the same hole the needle goes back through the same hole and you kind of have to hold this threat in place a little bit now and there you go you don't have to get it through the same hole it can be ballpark close because what ends up happening is the not actually covers the whole anyway so I'll show you again you want to bring it all the way through the fabric going toe hold the thread away from the fabric, wrap it around the needle twice and then bring it back through the fabric now that's the traditional french not wrapping it twice the way to vary it is the number of times you wrap the needle so I'm going to check in with all of you and see how you're doing and then only come back I'm going to show you how to bury it a little bit try it it looks like it looks like one happened here though yeah something yeah that's something happened that one's not quite right tried again can you watch you know what tighten up your well your fabric a little bit tighter and hoop that'll help on any time you tighten your fabric and hope you want to do it on all sides or at least the top and bottom and the two sides ok yeah that may help as you keep doing the french not you'll find that there is a point where you have to stop the stitch where you just simply don't have enough thread to wrap it and comfortably pull it through so be aware of that is that one just a stitch okay yeah you're can I show you yeah so I hope I hold it so I pull it through I actually hold the thread you were kind of going I hold the thread okay while I wrap it around on then I hold it tight while I pull it through so trying that I think it was coming it was coming on twisted is too loose yeah try that but I'll come back okay that was the first one this was second what do you do with it? I left it pope I mean pull it out if you like it great if you don't pull it out or you can bunch a bunch of them and as you bunch them you can tack that down does that make sense? Yeah but those look att you got it he got the super nerd is that better oh, hey yeah yeah I think it was just the tension it was coming on when sharon thinks like your colors okay, so on my sample you can see you get a lot of different effects when they're kind of close together they're bunched up I'm going to show you the easiest variation you can do which is buy varying the number of wraps you do around it so can pull through hold it tight and so traditionally it's too so let's blow everyone's minds and do five his heart now you'll see you have to play with the tension a little bit if it's too tight because it's more thread you're not going to be able to get it through easily so you'll see he'll have a little bit of tightness around the eye of the needle which if that happens just loosen your grip on the threat there be able to get it through so with five you can see you get more height good but you're not there beautiful so then a way to create texture is to do you know ah fiber next to a two all right get some to mention that way so there's the two and there's the five bigger one now another way to add more dimension it's not only by bunching them together but after you get a nice little sea of not going you can start to layer them up on top of each other and you'll start to get, like, a little mound of knots, so I'll show you here, ok? So here's a little. Okay, so I just got a knot in my thread. I'm gonna pull it out, cut and find where it is here and pull it back through. Okay, so that's, one way to fix a little snapping if you had it. Okay, so then layering you'll see there's tiny little, teeny tiny little spaces. Maybe you can see in there between the knots themselves. Yeah. There you go. So if you work in there, you start to get a little bit of a layered effect. Have nots upon not, and I will become even more three dimensional. There. See how much height there is on that and that's just from going back in and doing knots on top of knots. So this is sort of what this is, what the different groupings of them look like together. I love to use like an ombre palette with the french. Not that super pretty. So this is typically what what I'll do. The french not is something embraer. These kind of little scattered dots.
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