Tutorial for a Sailor's Knot

Here’s how I did the Sailor’s Knot on the card I posted today. In this tutorial, I am using two different colors of acrylic yarn. I did that so you could easily distinguish between the two strands.  I think this is hard to explain with words, but hopefully you can figure it out with the pictures.

1. Cut four lengths of string. The length should be at least twice the length you want the finished knot to be, but even longer pieces are easier to handle. (This knot can be done with just one piece of string, but I like a thicker knot better. For the finished card shown in the link above, I used a thickness of three strands of baker’s twine, each 8” long.)

2. Take the first piece of string and arrange it in a loop like this, the top tail should hang down.  The loop should be on your right and the two tails on the left.

3. Lay the second piece of string across the loop of the first piece. The lower part of the second string should be a short tail and doesn’t move. The upper part of this string is what moves.

4. Move the top of the second piece of string beneath the upper tail of the first piece.

5. Then place it over the lower tail.

6. Then thread the second string under the lower part of the loop of the first string and over the tail of the second string.

7. Thread the second string under the top of the loop in the first string, now your knot has been created.

 8. After that, you should hold all four ends and pull the knot closed.

9. If you pull hard and tight, you will end up with something that looks like this.

10. That’s okay, just play with it and loosen it up a bit until it looks like the finished knot you want. Sometimes I have to work with the two strands to get twists removed.  Your finished knot should look like this.

11. To attach this to a piece of cardstock, I secure the knot with glue dots and anchor the endson the back of the cardstock with sticky tape. It the knot is made of thick string, you may want to use dimensionals to attach that piece of cardstock to your project. (Baker’s twine is thin enough that I didn’t feel the need to use dimensionals.)

Thanks for reading my tutorial and Happy Crafting!!