Tangled Thread - Tips, Trick and Tutorials in Sewing & Stitching

To Knot or Not

by Deb on March 30th, 2006

This question is one that comes up on many discussion boards, mailing lists, and anywhere stitchers gather to discuss their art. It is my opinion that there is no right answer. I am not fond of spending the time to knot my threads, but if the piece I am stitching will be handled a lot or washed more than once, then I knot my thread. It would make me sick if my hard work and time were unravelled through the process of laundering.

For pieces that will be framed or backed, I am comfortable with not knotting. In these cases, I run my thread under a few stitches (on the backside of the piece) and am careful with the first couple stitches of my new length (so I don’t pull the floss all the way through the cloth). If it is an area of the piece where there are no existing stitches to catch the end of the thread, I leave an extra long tail, and coax it under the floss as I stitch. This takes some practice and patience, but in the end, the back side of the work is more uniformly flat when you do not use knots. If you use a bit of padding cloth under the piece when you press it, and press from the front (being sure to protect the piece with a pressing cloth), then even a back full of big knots won’t make the front pocked and bumpy. I think a person would need to have a bit of similar cushioning perhaps under it if framing the finished design, to avoid the knots being obvious, but this is something you could easily experiment with.

Another method which I haven’t tried (mostly because I didn’t learn that way, and I always forget until I’m partly finished with a length of thread) is the loop method. You use one strand of floss, and poke both ends through the eye of your needle, leaving the loop at the tail end. When you start the new length, you bring your needle up from the back of the cloth, making sure the loop doesn’t pull all the way through, make your stitch, and pass the needle through the loop once, gently pull the floss snug, before bringing it up through the cloth for the second stitch. This method lets you stitch with a two-strand effect, with no knot or tail at the beginning of a fresh length of floss, and only one tail at the end to weave under existing stitches.

I will have to test the loop method when I get to a section that is a single color and not a blend, since one must use two strands for the blends, which would result in four strands using the loop method. I think this method also lets you get a few more stitches per length of floss than other methods do, which isn’t much. But as individual pennies gathered together become dollars, individual inches eventually become skeins. I’d much rather put my floss on my fabric, than in the waste basket. :)

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POSTED IN: Floss and Thread