How to embroider French Knot Sheep

This weekend I finished embroidering the Lullaby Pillowcase I’d been working on for a couple of weeks. I’m so enamored by the cute little French Knot Sheep that I thought I’d share how to make them. They are super easy for the result.




French Knot Sheep How-To

Supplies:
fabric to embroider on
embroidery hoop
pencil or washable marker
embroidery needle
grey or white embroidery floss for wool
black embroidery floss

Using your pencil or washable marker draw ovals where you want the sheep on your project. They do not have to be perfect! Mine were about 1/2″ long. Put the fabric in your embroidery hoop.

Cut a length of the white or grey embroidery floss and thread your needle with it. You will be using all six strands of the floss to get a good thick knot. Now, you will make French knots along the oval you drew. (Here is a good tutorial on making French knots.) You want to wrap the floss around the needle twice when making these knots.

Then just fill in that oval with more knots. I like to work around the edge in a circle.

Once the oval is filled in it’s time to make the head and legs. Cut a length of the black embroidery floss. Separate the strands so you are working with only three. For the head I make three French knots in a triangle pattern. This time I wrap the floss around the needle three times for each knot. You can make your sheep look up or down by how you place the head, this one looks like it is looking up.

The legs are just four little straight stitches. Once again you can effect how the sheep look by the direction you place their legs. Look at the ones at the top of this post and how the jumping ones have slanted legs.

Now go embroider cute little sheep on everything!