Take a Stitch Tuesday - French Knots - Week 16

This week for Take a Stitch Tuesday (TAST), the goal was to learn or practice French knots. I have done French knots before, but not with much success. For some reason they would unravel or not sit tightly against the fabric.

I looked at examples of what people had done with French knots on Flickr and Google images. There are some very impressive pieces. If I was more skilled with French knots and embroidery, it would be nice to be able to an image with hundreds of little French knots. In reality, that would take me a very long time to do that.

So, I opted to do one sampler this week that used linen for the background fabric. After cutting it to the size I wanted, I frayed the edges by taking out the individual threads (about a half dozen on each side).

I sewed on two types of lace, and then began adding French knots directly on the linen as well as onto the center piece of lace.

One thing I found was that if I pulled the needle and embroidery floss too strongly through the linen, the whole knot would come right with it. With a more gentle-mindset and hand on the needle, I didn't have that problem for long.

As with past weeks, I combined a journal entry about the past week, a list of what I'm grateful for, and some images from greeting cards and scrapbooking paper. For example, the robin is representative of the ones I am seeing quite frequently now. The yellow bird is the closest image I had to a goldfinch which now are visiting the feeders decked-out in their beautiful yellow plumage.

The elephant, lion, and giraffe paper is a reference to the Library of Hope Book Drive that Sophia, Olivia, and I began earlier this month. Our goal is to collect 1,000 books and raise $800 to start a library in Lesotho, Africa. (As a side note, if you have children's books you want to donate or would like to make a donation to help ship the books to Africa, please click on the link above. We certainly would welcome your support!)