French Knot Flower Design – Tutorial & Stitch Along

French knot flowers are simple yet elegant, and today I’ll show you how to embroider them. Whether you want to practice French knots, or you want to add this to a piece of clothing, or include this motif in an embroidery. Regardless of the reason, this stitch-along is going to be a fun one!

French Knot Flower Design & Tutorial

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase an item.

Supplies

• Find the traceable design here.
• Cotton or linen fabric – here’s my favorite
• Embroidery or Milliner’s needle – available at Colonial Needle Co
• Fabric marker or pen – I used a Frixion heat-erasable pen
• DMC stranded cotton floss
  • 3052
  • 3362
  • 3752
  • 3820

Getting Started

I traced my design onto the fabric using a Frixion heat-erasable pen.

I am using 2-3 strands of floss throughout this embroidery.

The secret to effortless French knots is Milliner’s needles. These are special needles that have an eye that is the same width as the needle, so it makes it a lot easier to pull the thread through when you’re making knots. This needle isn’t required, but it does make a big difference!

Step by step tutorial is below, or you can hop to the video.

How To Make a French Knot Flower

I prefer to make a knot in the end of the thread to get started. The main reason I start with this knot is that it’s a lot easier to start the thread for a French knot with an away knot.

An away knot is a temporary knot that helps provide tension on the thread, and it also prevents the thread from slipping out when you first start a stitch.

To begin, place your needle and thread down through the front of the embroidery a few inches away from where you intend to start stitching.

Flower Petals

• To make a French knot, come up through the fabric with the needle and thread and twist the thread around the needle 3 times.
• Keeping the needle close to the fabric, go back down directly beside the working thread.
• Pull the thread tight on the needle, then pull the needle and thread through. A small knot should form, but if you have trouble, don’t worry; it takes a little bit of practice.

For each of the flowers, make 5 French knots using yellow thread, one for each petal. Leave the center dot unstitched for now.

Once you’re finished with the thread, cut the knot that is on the front surface of the fabric and secure the tails of the thread along the back.

Center Of The Flowers

Fill in the center of each flower fwith one single French knot using the light blue floss.

Leaves

For each of the leaves, we’ll be making a variation of the fishbone stitch using light green.

• Make a single stitch down the center of the shape, starting at the tip of the leaf and ending at the base.
• For the subsequent stitches, go slightly below the tip of the leaf along one side and end each stitch along the base of the leaf.
• Then repeat along the other side.

Most of these leaves only require 3 stitches, but if you want them to be larger, you can make a couple more stitches along the sides.

Stems

Starting directly below each flower, make a line of stem stitches using dark green thread.

• Come up through the fabric and skip a stitch length ahead along the line, keeping the working thread off to one side.
• Come up in the middle between the start and the end of the stitch. Pull the working thread through.
• Again, keeping the working thread off to one side, skip a stitch length ahead and come up at the base of the last stitch.

Start and end the thread for each branch of the stems. Once the stems intersect with the main stem, end that line of stem stitches.

Video Tutorial

And there you have it! A dainty branch of French knot flowers. I hope you found this stitch-along fun.

• If you want even more practice with French knots, check out this French knot tree tutorial.
• And if you’re looking for even more ways to stitch flowers, check out this post that has an assortment of embroidery stitches to use for flowers.