Fake Bullions for the Faint-of-Heart UPDATED

E-Rose wrote bullions scared her but not to worry! David McCaskill taught us on the ANG list how to make fake bullions and kindly gave me permission to teach anyone and everyone the technique. He discovered how to do it by accident when he messed up stitching something with perle thread and because he is a thread genius, he immediately saw the possibilities and perfected the technique.

To do it, you must have a perle-type thread. This doesn't work with any other kind of thread. I recommend you use a 3-4 inch length of thread and a needle with a larger eye than you'd normally use with this thread (although you shouldn't use a needle with an eye too fat for your NP canvas or other ground fabric). If you look at the loose thread with the knot below the example of a fake bullion, you'll see that I choose Trebizond, a silk perle. The end without a knot is already begining to untwist a little as that's how perle threads are made--they are twisted single threads. This characteristic is what David exploited in making fake bullions.

Secure your thread, then come up as usual. Slide your needle off the end of the thread and put it away safely temporarily--you'll need it again in a second. Grab the loose end of your thread and untwist the perle a bit so that you see all the component parts. (The loose length of thread on the canvas below the bullion shows you what perles look like.) Grab one of the pieces in one hand and all the rest in the other. Hold the single twist steady with one hand and slide all the other twists down toward the ground fabric or NP canvas. Let go. You'll have a bullion with a very messy top as you see above. Gently thread up all the loose ends again being careful to not disturb the bullion and secure the bullion on the back side.

There are drawbacks to fake bullions--you can only do one at a time and I personally find they are less controlled than the regular wrapped bullions. If I have only one bullion to do, and I'm not trying to carefully place it to mimic a finger or something else that needs to go one way and one way only, then I use fake bullions. Holi the colorful Tudor Dog had a fake bullion flower in her halo, for example, but I used the normal bullion knots to make the paw ridges in the Golden Rabbit as they had to be precise sizes and had to bend a certain way. You have to wrap a bullion to get that exactness.

Many, many thanks to David McCaskill for generously sharing this technique! David knows much more and you can see the terrific designs he works out on his website. Clicking on the waving flag on his home page takes you to a free flag design. Most of David's work is on line drawn canvas. Head to the Design section and choose Christmas, then look at his Millennium Ornaments bowl. He made the bowl transparent and used the ugliest thread in existance (in my opinion) to make those red sparkling ornaments. This is just one example of how fine a designer David is and how much he knows about threads.
https://www.needlepointdavid.com

By the way, I found another great tutorial on how to make traditional bullions here. You might enjoy looking and comparing how bullions and fake bullions work.
http://www.heritageshoppe.com/heritage/stitches/bullion.html

UPDATE: Belle found us a link to Mary Corbet's videos of how to make stitches. Bullion Knots are under the Detatched Stitches & Knots section. Thanks, Belle!
http://www.needlenthread.com/2006/10/video-library-of-hand-embroidery.html

Feel better, e-Rose?

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow