Welcome to day 19 of the Handmade Baby Clothes Onesie Month! As I was brainstorming ideas, I really wanted to make a faux necklace on a onesie. I thought of a few ways to do it, but I ultimately decided to make it out of french knots. What is a french knot, you say? Check out this 19 second video:
This lady’s got it down.
There are so many wonderful designs you can do using french knots if you want to explore french-knot-land.
(from Needle’n'Thread)
(as seen on the Craft website)
Don’t let these intricate designs fool you: up until a few days ago, I had never made a french knot. They’re not hard — you can do one, I promise. Where did I learn to make one? That 19 second You Tube video.
I will say that when she says wrap twice, I wrapped three times. (Gasp!!) But the more you wrap, the bigger the knot.
However, since I am a BFK (Beginning French-Knotter), my design is no where near as complicated or innovative as those designs I posted above. My design is at the beginner level. Baby steps.
To make a onesie like mine, you will need:
- prewashed, plain onesie
- embroidery hoop
- embroidery needle
- embroidery floss (ex: DMC brand)
- fabric pencil
To start, I drew the necklace design on the onesie using my fabric pencil. If you’re doing a different, more complicated design, I suggest you place your design underneath the top layer of your onesie and trace it, like I did for the sashiko technique. Other techniques to trace designs (like using transfer paper) don’t work very well on knit fabrics (I’ve tried).
I put my onesie in the embroidery hoop and then threaded my needle. I used two strands of the floss at a time, and I just got to french-knot-knot-knotting.
Then after awhile, I had this:
I used two different, but similar colors of floss to give the “necklaces” some variation. As you can see, I stopped at two, even though I drew out three. Making all those french knots is time consuming, and I felt that the two “necklaces” were sufficient.
I think the french knots look like little beads — cool!
What have you made using french knots?
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