KNOTTING

I've been goofing around doing something called KNOTTING. It's so very basic, not like the most intricate craft one can do, and in fact, I may never get past just making the knots, but thought it would be fun to try it. What it is, is a heavy thread that kinda uses a shuttle - like the very old pics you might have seen with victorian woman and huge shuttles that were open at both ends - they are actually knotting shuttles. They would make knot after knot and it would make a result that was kind of like the fore runner of chenille.

After making yards and yards of it, then they could make a shape with it. The same way you might find a shape in a child's coloring book, and the black line is drawing the shape - that line would be like the knotted cord, drawing the shape and couching between each knot to keep it in place.

Then they could either embroider inside it, or fill it with more cording, or leave it empty. I have no idea which was the most popular back then, there is limited info on it. There a 4 knots to learn. I have 2 links to pages, one has an explanation and things to see, but the other actually has videos. Then I'll show a pic of my first attempt at knotting. It's not much to look at, but actually very soothing, as it takes no brain power at all, so good if you just need to relax and not think to hard! I'm actually using a large clover shuttle and #3 cotton thread. My knots still need to be closer together, but are a lot closer than in the beginning. The last ones I made are nice and close.

It takes practice to get them to land where you want them to!
There are 2 fabulous links below my pic that shows the difference between what knotting is and what tatting is, and how to do it, and what you can make with it (embroidery type projects)

http://www.quaintrellelife.com/knotting.html
http://www.cfgriffith.com/image-gallery/knotting-shuttle-videos/

in reply to cozyhomelife's post:

Very Cool! Of course I knew somewhat about it, but hadn't seen it actually done. Thanks for sharing!

Rosencrantz Rosencrantz Rosencrantz

@moriah, what's Rosencrantz?

Sorry,

Rosencrantz is my "I will be able to find this thread again" word. :)

That's neat! . I think I've seen this in finished work before but thought it was candlewicking. I couldn't figure out how they got all those french knots to line up so neatly and close together but felt a little better about my own skill because they couldn't get their knots even in size. blush Oh well, I don't do candlewicking anymore anyway..

in reply to squeeky's post:

I thought about candle wicking looking similar also. Long ago, I got these little square 'pillows' that were sachets and you candle wicked the knots on top to make designs. I still don't know how I managed to do it, as I didn't seem to be able to do it again, years later, when I tried out of curiosity. I guess if I really wanted to make a project, I'd endeavor to do it.

At the bottom of the Quantraille page, I love the pink flower with "bow" leaves.

Forgot to mention I'm using a large clover shuttle with #3 thread.

Post removed by muskaan for the following reason: pics did not upload. .

Very interesting ! Didn't know about it. Thanks for sharing, Sandra.

Check out these dot picot strings - pure tatting,

Credit for original idea goes to Usha Shah - more details here

in reply to muskaan's post:

Those are amazing, @muskaan! The dot picot seems awfully fiddly! But the combination with tatting looks great.

in reply to cozyhomelife's post:

Thanks for the info, Sandra! I didn't know what knotting was - somehow I had gotten it confused with netting! It looks quite different from tatting.

in reply to GraceT's post:

Although I think tatting evolved from it, knotting is more an embroidery technique..

There is a C17th poem, The Knotting Song, by Sir Charles Sedley. See https://craftree.com/wiki/Literature+and+Poetry. Queen Mary (of Willam-and-Mary-of-Orange fame) is also mentioned in one of Sir Charles' poems, though by the time the poem was published in England, Queen Anne was monarch.

There were various types of knots: some even had names (e.g. Sugar Plum), depending on the number of twists before closing the 'ring'.

Here's and example:

@JudithConnors Neat! I used to do that in macrame, I called them barrels because that's what they looked like to me. I used them when I was bringing the core lines to the outside and would put a big bead at the top, so there'd be the two outside lines with barrels, then inside the bead I'd swap the inside and outside and put them on the outside of the run on the other side of the bead. Others probably didn't think it looked as neat as I did.

@Cozyhomelife I remember couching! It says that's how you mount the knots, couching the line. When I was using a small cord to outline something, it was couched along the line. It was one embroidery stitch I could do well.

in reply to JudithConnors's post:

hmmmm.... that looks much different than the ones on the quantrelle page (I like these better). But did you look on that page, you would have seen 4 different knots at the bottom of the page and how to make them?

in reply to cozyhomelife's post:

Some knots were formed by more than one 'wrap' around the loop on the hand before it was drawn up. This appears in my sample above.

The Josephine knot was a substitute for a picot on a chain (much like Usha's dot picot). Gradually this became a shell/scallop, or a tiny ring of half-stitches as we know it today.

Rhoda Auld's book, Tatting: the contemporary art of knotting with a shuttle contains some information on knotting. Page 120 illustrates the couched designs which @cozyhomelife has mentioned, while pages 121-124 discuss knotting itself. Here is a selection of different types of knots used in knotting from page 123: .

Bear in mind that knotting is a generic term which encompasses macramé, fringing, tatted lace, as well as knotting itself.

The infamous 'cat o' nine tails' also used a selection of knots.

in reply to JudithConnors's post:

the last one looks like it is getting closer to discovering tatting - 2 ds with picot in between. I have some of those old timey books that cover old handwork types. I need to find them and see what they might have to say.

in reply to cozyhomelife's post:

To quote Rhoda Auld: "Knotting, like tatting, also uses loops and picots. In Fig. f, each knot contains two double tatting knots.....". Note that the knots are separate and spaced.

There is a difference of opinion as to whether tatting developed from macramé or knotting. After all, a shuttle is only an implement for storing thread.

The knotting I was looking at was much more basic - just knots tied in string - no ds. The one in the book you have, seems to have went thru some changes, and moving more toward tatting.

in reply to cozyhomelife's post:

Double stitches (more precisely, double/cow hitches) were used in macramé and fringing many hundreds of years ago, whereas the 'knotting' you're referring to was practised in the C17-18th by needlewomen who favoured the style Chinois. When strings of them were couched onto fabric, they gave a textured finish.

I wouldn't regard the development of tatting as a linear progression from knotting, as all these crafts overlapped in time. Tatting, as we know it with flipped hitches, was probably late C18th-->early C19th, but there is no precise origin. So we cannot be pedantic.

Various effects in macramé flip hitches.

BTW, the (bullion) knots in my photo (post #13) are rosary 'beads' bought at a stall near a Spanish church in Los Angeles in 2007.

Yes, as shown in the pages that I referenced, my post was about the knotting done int he 17th-1`8th centuries.. It is that knotting I was sharing, not really trying to relate or compare it to another like tatting or macrame. It was all about what was done back then.