Bullion Knot Tutorial (my way)

The Bullion Knot is a fun stitch to have in your stitch repertoire. I especially like to make cute (slightly kitschy) roses with them. Now the Bullion Knot is feared by some stitchers but it's really not an incredibly complicated stitch to learn. I'm not claiming that my Bullion Knots are perfect, and I'm the first one to admit that the way I make them is a bit awkward but I hope this 'how to' will help one or two stitchers out there to overcome their fear of Bullion Knots! In a next tutorial I will show you how I make my Bullion Knot roses.

Milliners needles will make it easier for you to make a Bullion Knot (and French Knots as well). The eye of a Milliners needle is just as narrow as the shaft which makes it easier to pull through when you are making the actual 'knot'. Milliners needles are also longer than regular needles which makes wrapping your thread around the needle easy peasy. Now if you don't have a Milliners needle at hand, don't worry I have made Bullion knots with other types of needles too. Just make sure the needle isn't too short or has a 'bulky' eye.

So here's how you make a Bullion Knot.  I used the (hopefully) best photos from different Bullion Knots I made, hence the different floss colours. Hope it's not too confusing! I'm also a left-handed stitcher but as far as I can tell that really has no impact on how to perform this particular stitch. :)

Let the thread come up at A. The next step is to insert the needle at B ( and let it come up again at C.  Hold the eye-end of the needle down with your thumb so the upper bit of the needle comes up and start wrapping the thread (that comes up at A) around the needle 4-6 times (to start with) clockwise.

You can see that the Bullion Knot is already taking shape. It is now time to pull the needle through. Try to keep some tension on the thread that is on the right of your needle but not too much or you will have trouble pulling your needle through. Not enough tension and you may end up with something like this...

Eeeep! Where is my Bullion Knot? Don't worry,  keep on pulling the needle through gently and when you are nearly done, ease down the loops with your thumb and index finger....

...and it should then end up looking something like this. To secure the knot insert the needle at B again.

Here are some Bullion Knots I made earlier...

Now if you want to make a curved Bullion Knot (which is handy if you want to make Bullion Knot roses for example) you need to increase the number of wraps around the needle while keeping the distance from A to B (or B to C) the same as with the regular Bullion Knot.

Mmm in yellow they look a bit like maggots to me!

The more wraps the curvier your Bullion Knot will be! I exaggerated a little bit to show a really curvy Bullion Knot and wrapped the thread about 15 times around the needle. To make a Bullion Knot Rose you will probably be better off with a little less curvy Bullion Knot.  I will show you how to make Bullion Knot Rose in a next tutorial!

Let me know how you get on the with the Bullion Knot! 

More Bullion Knot musings...

I thought it would be fun to incorporate some Bullion Knots in the pattern I'm working on. I know some people find Bullion Knots kind of scary, almost as scary as the French Knot.  And to be honest my Bullion Knots look pretty hopeless when I'm halfway making one, but when finished they look o.k. (at least I think so) So I'm planning to post a 'how to' on Bullion Knots soon, including a shocking photo of the hopeless phase. :)

Stitch Challenge # 2 Rope Stitch

It took me three tries to get an o.k. result with the Rope Stitch. It was not a difficult stitch to master but to get an even looking result was the hardest part for me. I wanted to use this stitch to make a tree trunk (and add branches later in a different stitch)  so I did not want to end up with totally straight lines. The gentle curves of the tree trunk might have made it a bit trickier to get perfect stitches. I like the slightly raised effect of the Rope Stitch and it actually looks a bit like the Satin stitch. The Rope Stitch is performed differently though and it has slanted and not straight stitches.

Halfway one of my unpicking sessions I decided to start my sampler piece over on a better quality linen. The other linen left holes a bit too easy when stitched on. So I got to practice my Bullion Knot a bit more et voila:

I'm quite happy with how these turned out. Practice really does make perfect! (or at least 'better') However these Bullion Knots were still quite difficult to make as I couldn't find the right needle for making them (a Milliner's needle) I ordered some now and hopefully that will solve the problem.

Bullion Knot musings

A little while ago I had already tried my hand at the Bullion Knot. That went quite well but I only did a few then and  I hadn't made any since. So the first couple of Bullion Knots I tried this weekend didn't go too smoothly. I had read the info on this stitch in all four of my books and also watched this video that Ana posted in the Embroidery Stitch Gallery. She makes perfect Bullion Knots without even using a hoop! Anyway, after the first 'rusty' ones I think I got the hang of it and even began to have some fun with this stitch. I do think I need to use the so called Milliners needles though next time. They have really small/narrow eyes which makes it easier to make this stitch. I struggled with pulling the needle through on most of my knots because the eye on my needle was quite narrow but not narrow enough.

I think this stitch has lots of possibilities! I made a flower and some weird Green Kale kind of plants with it (the original example for that was a rose but I'm not very good at following examples) but it would be perfect to make a tiny snail with.as well! Or, as the other names for this stitch suggest: caterpillars and worms! At this moment I have no fixed idea of what my sampler is going to look like but I thought I'd make at least three sections: the top will be the 'sky', the middle 'land'  (where these flowers are and a huge bunny) and the lower part 'sea'.

If you have decided to play along,  I'd love to see your Bullion Knots in the Embroidery Stitch Gallery and read your experiences with this stitch in the comments! Suggestions for new Stitch Challenge are also welcome, I'm enjoying this. :)