Post #309426 by Haole'akamai on Mon, May 28, 2007 12:40 PM

I forgot to talk about the most exciting thing I've learned so far, The Quilter's Knot!!

A little background on me: I am a self-taught sewer. I started making/sewing things when I was about 9 or 10. I was never shown how to put a knot at the end of the thread, so I just grab it and tied it off like you do rope. Sometimes the knots tied on top of each other, sometime they didn't; I just kept knotting until they eventually met up. Often, I was left with a long tail of wasted thread. Gotta say, the whole thing was a major reason why I never liked hand-stitching. I used to pull extra-long (practically two arm-lengths) thread just to avoid the whole knotting procedure. Pulling that much thread when quilting is a big no-no. It takes too much time to make stitches and it over-works the thread.

In walks my savior. Nancy Lee Chong shows how to make a "quilter's knot" on her DVD. In my mind, if I never make a quilt, this alone is worth the price of the DVD!!!

Here are pictures of me doing it.

Thread your needle. Take the end of your thread and hold it under the needle tip against your finger.

Wrap the thread around the needle tip about 3 or 4 times.

Grasp the wrapped thread with your thumb and forefinger...

and then slide the wrapped part down the thread.

It'll automagically make a knot that the end of the thread!!!!

Some of you may not believe it, but this is life-changing for me. Knotting the thread was one of things I was most dreading about this project, but no more.

[ Edited by: Haole'akamai 2007-05-28 12:49 ]