Knots and Knot Stitches--Herring-bone Stitch--Feather Stitch--Basket Stitch--Fishbone Stitch--Cretan Stitch--Roumanian Stitch--Various Insertion Stitches--Picots.
It would be difficult to go far in embroidery without requiring knots for one purpose or another. They are useful in all sorts of ways, and make a pleasant contrast to the other stitches. For the enrichment of border lines and various parts of the work, both pattern and background, they are most serviceable, and also for solid fillings; for such places as centres of flowers or parts of leaves, they are again valuable. They have been used to form a continuous outline, but owing to their tendency to make a weak line, not frequently; indeed they usually show to better advantage when slightly separated.
Examples are to be seen of English knotted line work in which the knotting was executed in the thread previously to embroidering with it. The knotting of thread was a pastime with ladies in the XVIIth century. The thread, usually a linen one and as a rule home spun, was wound upon a netting-needle, and by the aid of this a close series of knots was made upon it; when finished it somewhat resembled a string of beads. Balls of this prepared knotted thread may still be found, treasured up in old work receptacles. When prepared it was couched on to the material with fine thread, like a cord or braid, and made to follow out some prearranged pattern. In white linen work it was used for carrying out ornamental borderings on infants' robes and other dainty articles.
French knots can be worked in the hand or in a frame. They are easier to manage in the latter, and to look well they must be neatly and firmly made. Completed they should resemble beads lying end upwards on the material. To work the French knot (fig. 57)--Bring the thread through the material at the required point, take hold of it with the left finger and thumb near the starting-point (A on plan), then let the point of the needle encircle the held thread twice, twist the needle round and insert it at point B on plan, draw the thread through to the back, not letting go the held thread until necessary. Fig. 58 shows some French knots decorating a leaf spray, and various other examples of their use can be found in the book.