French Knot

Mary Queen of Scots dreaming and stitching through her captivity - The Great Tapestry of Scotland, 2013

Jul 30

Embroidery Day

Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day

Cheesecake Day

A Piece of Cake

Embroidery Day

French Knot

Today's Musings, History & Folklore

"She sits and makes pink roses with her thread
And wonders what to do, her heart astir,
What road to take, where roads branch close ahead ..."

~ Embroidery, Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978)

You won't need an embroidery hoop for this French Knot—just a pair of ghillies! Maggie and Duncan Keppie's charming 32-bar strathspey for 3 couples stitches together elegant figures with every turn and exchange, creating a dance that's as satisfying to perform as a finished piece of needlework for Embroidery Day!

Beginning with the Knot figure, this dance flows beautifully into other graceful figures including a half turn and twirl and the graceful La Baratte figure!

The dance takes its name from the French knot, one of embroidery's most recognizable stitches. Created by wrapping thread around the needle before drawing it through the fabric, it forms a tiny raised knot that adds texture, detail, and charm to a design. Though small, a well-made French knot can be one of the most eye-catching elements in a piece of needlework.

Embroidery itself has a rich and fascinating history. Across cultures it has served as decoration, storytelling, mending, and a display of craftsmanship, with every region developing its own distinctive styles and techniques. One of Scotland's contribution is Ayrshire whitework, which evolved from eighteenth-century Dresden and tambour embroidery.

Worked on fine muslin, Ayrshire whitework featured delicate floral motifs accented with lace insets, satin stitch, and beading. Its skilled embroiderers became affectionately known as "The Flowerers," a tribute to the graceful blossoms that adorned so much of their work.

During the early nineteenth century, Ayrshire whitework was exported throughout Europe, the British Empire, and America for elegant ladies' collars, cuffs, caps, and beautifully decorated babies' robes and bonnets. By the 1860s, however, changing fashions, the disruption of the American Civil War, and competition from less expensive machine-made Swiss embroidery from St. Gallen brought this remarkable Scottish craft into decline.

Happily, while Ayrshire whitework may now be a treasured part of history, the French Knot is still very much alive. So pick up your ghillies instead of your needle, and enjoy stitching together this delightful dance! 🕺 💃 💜 🤍 💜 🧵 🧵 🧵 🪡

French Knot

Today is World Embroidery Day! An excerpt from the Embroidery Manifesto states:

”We want to acknowledge embroidery as an act of free creativity, which can lead to free, creative thoughts and ideas. We want to tie our embroidery threads from the privileged northern hemisphere together with stiches that are sewn by embroidering sisters and brothers all over the world."

A French knot is knotted stitch in which the yarn is knotted around itself.

One of the best known embroideries created to chronicle a historic event is the Bayeux tapestry (first documented in the 15th century) which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings.

Inspired by the Bayeux tapestry, "The Battle of Prestonpans Tapestry 1745" is a large modern embroidery created in Prestonpans, East Lothian, Scotland, and illustrates the events before, during and after the Battle of Prestonpans on 21 September 1745 where Bonnie Prince Charlie triumphed over the Hanoverian Army led by Sir John Cope.

Like the Bayeux Tapestry, this tapestry is actually an embroidered cloth, rather than a woven tapestry. More than two hundred embroiderers created the work over a two-year period; more than half these reside in Scotland along the route that Bonnie Prince Charlie marched to his Victory. Other embroiderers with family links come from as far as the US, Australia and New Zealand. For more about this, see here.

The complete community artwork measures 104 metres and consists of 103 panels!

Another great work of art is the 2013 Great Tapestry of Scotland! Stitching began in the Spring of 2012 and was almost complete for the first exhibition in September 2013. At that point four panels out of a total 160 panels remained unfinished. These panels were completed in late 2013 and the completed tapestry was hung for the first time in Aberdeen Art Gallery from February to April 2014. Each panel (1 metre x 1 metre) took at least 500 hours to complete. That is a total of more than 50,000 hours (equivalent to sewing 24 hours a day for 6 years!)

The panels include illustrations of the end of the most recent ice age in 8,500 BC, the circumnavigation by Pytheas in c. 320 BC, Viking invasions in the 9th century, Duns Scotus in c. 1300, the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the Black Death in the 1350s, the foundation of St Andrews University in 1413, the Battle of Flodden in 1513, Mary, Queen of Scots in the 16th century, the publication of the King James Bible in 1611, the Act of Union 1707, the Jacobite rising of 1715 and of 1745, James Watt, Adam Smith, David Hume, James Boswell, Walter Scott, James Clerk Maxwell, Highland Games, the First and Second World Wars, the first-ever international rugby match (between Scotland and England in 1871), North Sea oil from the 1990s, Dolly the Sheep born 1996, and the re-creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. A late detail was added to commemorate Andy Murray's victory at Wimbledon.

The tapestry measures 143 metres (469 ft) long, each panel being displayed individually in approximately chronological order. In comparison, the Keiskamma tapestry in South Africa is 120 metres (390 ft) long, and the Bayeux Tapestry is nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long.

For more on this extraordinary work of embroidery art, click the thistle embroidery.

Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!