Week 31: More Decorative Techniques

Many different techniques can be used to create beautiful patterns. Let’s look at a few different knots and other ways to wrap the body to add an extra flair to your ties.

The goal of this week is to explore different decorative techniques, their variations, and discover new ways to improve our ties.

Table of Contents

Activities

Day 211: Woven Knots

Weaving techniques can create a great variety of aesthetic knots. These frequently have different meanings in different cultures. By understanding the principles of woven knots, you can build progressively more complex ones.

Day 212: More Decorative Knots and Hitches

Let’s continue exploring with even more types of knots and hitches. In particular, the flower knots are an interesting family that is very important in Chinese culture. The triple crown knot is the basic version of the flower knot; you can use the same principle by adding more leaves to create a more complex knot. The Ringbolt hitch is another interesting decorative pattern to look into.

Day 213: More Weavings

Weaving can be used in many different ways in bondage. It can be aesthetic and structural. Try using weaving for different purposes, make a hip harness structure, create a decorative pattern, etc.

Day 214: Braids and Sinnets

Sinnets are techniques to braid the rope on itself or around another object. It is familiar to use braids to tie hair, and there are lots of fun possibilities for rope structure as well. In particular, braiding a cuff is faster to tie than weaving and will create a structure that is both stable and comfortable. This technique is great for creating a comfortable cuff that doesn’t require staying under tension. It is quite popular in suspension and is just as useful for floor ties. You can also try using different sinnet and braid patterns to create decorative elements in your ties.

Day 215: Mixing Colours

By combining ropes of different colours, you can create different decorative patterns. This can be starting with two different colours and tying as if they were one rope. Or creating different parts of a tie with a different coloured rope to make them stand out from each other.

Day 216: Lacing Ties

You can create beautiful patterns by connecting two ladder ties. This is great to connect two parallel limbs, such as the arms in the back or in front, or the legs.

Day 217: Finishing Ties

There are several techniques to finish a tie, use up the remaining rope, and create a clean finish. Sword wrapping, wraps, inline cuffs, half-hitch pattern, sinnet leash, bundle, just to name a few. Each adds interesting aesthetic and play elements. To increase our mastery of these techniques, we can measure how much rope is actually used by each method so we can pick the right one when we want to finish a tie swiftly without having dangling rope ends.

Review

Some techniques seen in previous activities can also be used to make decorative patterns. Check them out to complete your exploration of this topic:

Video References

We compiled a YouTube playlist with various videos on this topic; let us know if you find any others we should add to it. Note that video references may display risky or unstable techniques; viewer discretion is advised. 

View the playlist on YouTube

Inspirations and Resources

Let’s continue with More Knots and Hitches

Or return to Fall for more options.