The French Knot

Embroidery always appealed to me and when I wanted to make this memory piece shown above of my Dad and me, I found the French Knot as my vehicle for interesting texture, scale and color variation.

The knots are formed with two different colors of regular sewing thread wrapped three times around a #8 embroidery needle. Regular sewing thread is great because it is available in hundreds of hues. I use a hue that has five levels of values and by putting two hues together, get great color depth.

I was so happy with the process of making the knots that I went on to do many portraits of my family and to create others by commission.

You can see a little bit more on the technical aspects of how I prepare a French Knot project by looking at Item No. 1 For My Container in this earlier blog.