French Knots - How to Use Them

Hi there, this video is all about French knots. I'm going to be showing you how to do French knots in varying sizes as well as some uses for them. I'll start out by showing you how to do a French knot using two strands of floss. So I'm going to be putting it right here. So always start off underneath the fabric and you're going to come up through your desired point and pull your floss all the way through. Next use your non-dominant hand to hold your floss steady and wrap the needle once, twice and then go back down right beside where you came up but not through the exact same hole and keep that tension really strong as you pull down. That's the key to having a nice clean French knot. Next I'll show you the same thing but this time I'll use four strands of floss so my French knot will be a little bit bigger. So once again you're starting from the underside of the fabric, you're going to pull your floss all the way through. Use your non-dominant hand to hold your floss tight and wrap it once, twice and go back down right beside where you came up but not through the same hole. Keeping that tension with your non-dominant hand will allow for a nice clean knot. And lastly I'll show you how to do a French knot using six strands of floss. Once again you're starting from the underside of the fabric, pulling your floss all the way through, using your non-dominant hand to hold it, wrapping twice and coming back down to the fabric right beside where you came up, keeping the tension. And again you should see this knot is subtly bigger than the last one. Next I'm going to show you some uses for French knot in your everyday stitching. So we'll apply what we just learned and fill in the center of this first flower. I'm going to use two strands of floss for this one because I want my French knots to be small and dainty. So once again coming up, wrapping twice and going back down holding that tension. I decided to start in the very middle of the flower and then I'll just do French knots all around that first French knot and my center of the flower should be filled in. So here's how it turned out and as you can see it gives my flower so much texture in the middle. I call this technique clustering French knots. For this next flower sample I'm going to be using the same amount of floss, so two strands of floss, and I'm just putting little French knots on the ends of each one of these branches and the effect will sort of be like cherry blossoms. And here's my result. It's very simple, you can always make it more detailed by clustering the knots a little bit more. I like to stitch clouds using French knots because I find they give me the best texture and allow for that fluffy feel. So for these clouds I'm using four strands of floss and I'm going to be using my French knot technique but I'm going to be doing a slightly looser technique. And what I mean by that is that instead of doing a lot of tension, as you can see, I didn't pull it so tight and as a result the French knot should look a little bit looser and not quite as rigid and tight. So I'm using my non-dominant hand, I'm holding it, I'm wrapping once, twice, and as you can see right here I don't pull all the way tight. I leave it sort of with a bit of room and that way the French knots are just a little bit bigger, a little bit looser. So here's my result for the cloud using four strands of floss. To be honest if I had to do it again I would use six strands because I want it to look fluffier. Next I'll show you how to use French knots to do hair. I'm going to use two strands and I'm doing that because I'm going to do a mix in this one of tighter French knots like this one and then also looser ones like this. The reason I'm doing that is because I want the hair to look more realistic and sometimes in hair you have big curls and small curls and so I think if I do a mix of that it kind of gives more of a realistic look and less uniform. So here's how my hair came out using a mix of tighter French knots and looser French knots. And the last thing I'm going to show you is filling in this sheep using French knots. I decided to use six strands of floss on this one because I just want the sheep to look like a big fluffy marshmallow. And there's the result. I probably should have used the same amount for the cloud. Thank you for watching this video on French knots. I hope you learned a thing or two and are inspired with some ways to use French knots in your own projects. Thanks so much!