How To: Bullion Knot for Needlepoint

Today, Melissa of The Wool & The Floss gives us a detailed tutorial of the Bullion Stitch for needlepoint projects. We love to use this stitch for Santa's beard, palm fronds (like shown here), hair, and so much more!

This is video support for our Eye Candy Santa Round stitch guide.

Bullion Needles

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TRANSCRIPT:

So today, we're here to discuss how to do bullion knots. If you look at my ornament that I made for my daughter, Ali, these little palm trees—the palm fronds—are done in bullion knots. I think a lot of people are very intimidated by bullion knots, but they're really quite simple. One of the most important things to know is that there are three different needles you could possibly use.

We're working here on a 13-mesh canvas, so normally, you would use a size 20 needle. But if you notice, a typical tapestry needle has a wider eye and a narrower needle itself. There is something called a milliner's needle, where the eye and the needle are the same width. In this case, we're using bullion needles. The bullion needles that we sell here at The Wool & The Floss are by Tulip, and they come in two different sizes.

They come in long or short, and this is an example of one of the needles in each of the tubes. Both of them come with four needles per tube. The main difference to note is that the short ones are also slimmer. So, if you want smaller bullion knots, this may make some sense. If you want wider bullion knots, the wider needle makes some sense.

In this case, we're going to use the wider needle because we're working on a larger mesh canvas. I have pulled three-ply—actually, I think it's four-ply—which I think will be just fine of Bella Lusso.

First, I'm going to (hopefully successfully) thread this needle with all four at the same time. Hallelujah, it worked! In order to do a bullion knot, my original teacher of these is a lovely, lovely instructor by the name of Kathy Fenchel, who used to teach in the Grosse Pointe area. She would always say: "Up at A, down at B, wrap, wrap, wrap back, up at A, down at B." So, I'm going to use those same prompts. A bullion knot can be as long as your thread is.

The first thing you're going to do is come up at A. You're going to go down at B, wherever you want that bullion knot to end. You're going to keep your thread loose and come back up at A—sorry, my hands are not cooperating—and you're going to leave this needle kind of standing out of the canvas. I'm holding it on the back so I can move it around.

Then you're going to wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap. One thing you need to be careful of is the tips of the blade needles. They are sharp. They are more like a chenille needle than a tapestry needle, so they are sharp.

You want your loops to wrap them and kind of push them down so they're all nice neighbors, and you want it to be as long as the space you're covering. Once you have the amount of wraps you need—sorry, my fingers are not working—you're going to kind of hold those top ones in place, pull up your needle, and pull them through all those little wraps you just made.

This is why it makes sense that the eye of the needle is the same size as the rest of the needle. I'm working with wool, so the threads tend to stick to each other a little bit more. But you can nudge them around, which I'm just kind of flicking with my fingers.

Remember I said: "Up at A, down at B, back up at A, and back down at B," meaning you're sharing that hole again. You're going to pull that down and into place. And that's that—simple!

If you want to make your bullion knot curve a little bit, I would probably just use one ply of this thread. We'll see how it's going to work with multiple plies, but you can kind of push your bullion knot off to one side or another and then tack it in place so it has a little shape to it. But that's kind of graduate bullion knots. There you go—it's that simple!