Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself in this situation: You’re creating your newest macrame piece or you’re following a tutorial and OOPS – your macrame cord is too short! Yes, I thought so, you’ve been there, I’ve been there – we’ve all been there!
Are you new to macrame? Then check out my MACRAME BEGINNER TIPS here. This post also includes the basic macrame knot tutorials.
Why is your macrame cord too short?
Calculating and estimating cord needs for macrame designs can be hard. Different macrame knots take up different amounts of cord and the macrame pattern you follow might be tighter or looser (aka full of knots or with few knots and loads of empty space).
There are many reasons why you might have ran out of macrame cord before finishing your newest macrame piece. The most obvious, and the one I encounter in my own work all the time, is:
- I IMPROVISE when I design – I might have an idea in my head of what I want to do and I estimate my cord needs for that idea just to end up changing my mind along the way!
Even if you follow a macrame tutorial where the estimated cord needs have been pre-calculated, you might still run into a situation where your cords are too long or too short. Why? Because of:
- HANDWRITING – Everyone has a different handwriting when knotting. I tie my knots quite tight but you might tie yours much looser and thus you need more cord. The tightness of your knots may also vary on different days, or is even dependent on your mental state.
Continue your cords – Square Knot Edition
Now as you can imagine, the ways to continue your macrame cords differ based on what knot you are using. This blog post covers how to continue your cords when using one of the basic macrame knots:
THE SQUARE KNOT
Press play on the video below or keep reading for written & photo instructions!
If you need help on how to continue cords when using CLOVE HITCH knots, just check out this YouTube video here. Continuing your cords when tying clove hitches is actually much easier – just hide the new cord at the back of your previous clove hitch.
In this tutorial I’m using a 4mm single strand cord by Macralab. I bought their mega spool of 440 meters, and it’s amazing! The cord is made 95% of cotton and 5% of recycled PET bottles and has OEKO-TEX Class I certification. Macralab is a new macrame cord supplier founded by a group of macrame enthusiast friends in Italy. For the moment they only ship to Italy.
Below, as well as in the video, you’ll find instructions for two different situations. First tutorial is for when you run out of both working cords and the second is for when only one of your working cords is too short.
Let’s get to it!
1) Both macrame cord ends are too short
If you’re running out of BOTH of your working cords, follow these steps.
Before you start, double check that your last square knot is facing the same way as mine, which is right. You can of course continue your cords after a left facing square knot too, but you need to mirror the instructions.
Done correctly you shouldn’t be able to notice where you continued your cords on the right side of the work. On the reverse side, however, the intervention is slightly visible.
2) Only one macrame cord end is too short
If you’re running out of only one of your working cords when making square knots, follow these steps. Check again that your last square knot is facing the same way as mine, or mirror the instructions.
Disclaimer: I have to say that I much prefer the first technique. From experience I can say that continuing both cords is a much less visible. So when I need to continue just one cord, I quite often cut the second working cord too and continue both. Nonetheless, sometimes you might not have that option, so here’s the technique to continue just one working cord.
Now you should see a sort of a “gap” between your last two square knots, right in-between the two short cords. In the next step we close that gap by looping each short cord end to the back of your work so that they are on top of each other.
And here you go – that’s how you continue your cords if they are too short!
Let me know in the comments below if you’d like more macrame trouble shooting blog posts and tutorials like this.
xo
Tuija
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