Here's what I do...
After the last stitch, put the needle back in the fabric, as if you were taking another stitch. When it is about halfway through (but NOT all the way through), wind the thread around it several times and pull taut. Hold your finger on where you have wound it around, pull the needle through, and pull tightly.
It's a knot.
Then snip off the thread.
Easy, didn't know there was any other way in fact. (Learned it in second grade from my teacher, just found out my mom didn't know that trick either.)
You mean, cut the thread beyond the needle and wrap the free end of the thread around the needle? Sounds neat. I'll try it and see what happens.
Actually, you need to make sure you DON'T cut the thread first. Lesse if I can explain better...
(Drawings would be useful.)
(Acting it out would be more useful yet.)
Take your last stitch.
DON'T CUT ANYTHING.
Put the needle through the fabric OR through one of the last stitches. It should be all on one side of the fabric -- needle, a piece of the fabric or the thread from another stitch, then more needle.
Take some of the trailing thread... between where it comes out of the fabric from the last stitch and the eye of the needle... and wrap it around the pointy end of the needle, alongside the last stitch and or where it comes out of the fabric.
Hold the wrapping taut.
Pull needle through.
That makes a knot.
Cut after that.
That's clear. I'm going to go home and try it.
Well, geez, you all are talking about embroidery stitching (french knot) to knot the end. Perhaps we need to work up an A2K sampler...
I do a really lovely cable stitch, which i often practiced by hemming up bell bottoms for hippies with embroidery thread in bright colors (i'd have done it for straights, too, but none ever asked me to . . . )
Ossobuco--
When you start the A2k Sampler thread, put me down for crosspatch stitching, if you please.
hmmmmmmmm
forget about going to the tailor the next time I need pants hemmed.
I do recall that knots in hand-sewing were considered huge no-no's. Setanta's method, once I got my head around the description, is very much what I was taught.
So, perhaps manana, or, excuse me, domani, I'll start a sampler thread. I haven't personally embroidered a thing since 1954. I did do some mean sewing in subsequent years, but stopped when I left... 1937 1/2 Glendon Avenue, and didn't want to lug the v. heavy macchina, which coincided with my taking art classes. Still, a sampler is an amusing idea - think, think, of the short aphorisms...
Thinking.
Anybody else want to start it, go ahead.
It could be endless. I swear, even some of the constructed sentences on the word game threads ring bells sometimes.
Sew your words
So your words
Sow good seed
Reporting In....
I did it Noddy's way. worked like a charm.
Oynxelle--
Wonderful!
My mother's grandmother told her when she was a little girl that little girls who did not sew neatly were sent straight to hell where they would have to remove every false (sloppy) stitch that they had ever made with their noses.
This inculcated a habit of skepticism in my mother.
