The first step in making a wall hanging is threading the dowel with the base strings. Because DMC thread is so thin, I’m able to use kitchen skewers cut down to a shorter length. The pattern I’ve created is 24 strings wide, so I cut twenty-four individual strings and folded them in half to make a thicker base string.

I made sure to leave a two-row border around the building, so I started knotting these first two rows. This pattern uses two types of knots: forward knots and backward knots. The first picture below is of a forward knot. This knot is used when you are moving left to right.

The backward knot pictured below is used when you are moving right to left.

After one row of forward knots and one row of backward knots, the top border is finished:

From here, the different colors are brought in, which will be in next week’s post, the final art process piece for this series!

To see more of my work before next week, I’m on Instagram under the username @_tiedinknotske and on Etsy.