A pentagonal stellar knot tied in red, white and blue in a tribute to the flag colours and stars. Since I wanted the colours to remain in the same order as they went around the knot, the ears could not nest as is usually desirable in a ribbon style multi-strand knot. Instead the colours cross as shown below. Knowing this would happen, I had planned to cut the ears when I started thinking of the design. Once cut, it was both less and more than I expected as the cut ends were more chaotic than I was expecting, although down near the body of the knot the doubled colour alignment from the front and back layers was… well, I’m still trying to decide how much I like or dislike it. 8)

I started by binding the tassel neck with a thin black cord. Then after I finished the black version with a beaded tassel neck I decided that the grey version needed more “bling”. To contrast with the randomly beaded neck, plus because I had already put an orderly black whipping on the grey tassel neck, I decided an orderly, lightly beaded design was the way to go. Starting with a round of beads (3 black, 1 silver) around the top and bottom of the existing whipping, I also added a smattering of silver beads to the whipping itself.

The “back” side (see right) is the first side I worked on. I think the bead placement is sometimes sub-optimal. On the “front” side (see left), I made sure to sew the beads higher up on the cords so that they couldn’t roll under and hide. I also pulled the cords very tight which ended up covering more of the centre bead with cord, after all that time I spent looking for a knot with a nice big centre hole to showcase the beads.

Even so, I’m pleased with the results (it’s certainly a successful proof of concept work). Now it just needs a tassel and it’s done.

Having finished the grey knot off with little black beads I knew I wanted bigger beads (if the package had sizes I would tell you what they are, but there’s no label and I can’t really guess). I started with the clear and they’re actually a smidge on the large side. They work nicely with the knot itself giving a kind of dew drop effect, but they crowd the middle, overly obscuring the middle stone.

Here’s a progress shot of black version with the centre bead in place. Pretty, no? 8)