Pistil Stitch

Time to share a new stitch I have learned from my 100 Stitches Plus list.
This one is the Pistil Stitch - you can see from the above picture that it is the ideal stitch to use when forming part of the pistil of a flower!  

This stitch is very simple, it is basically a French Knot with a tail. 

For my demonstration, I am using a color variations pearl cotton floss, this is DMC number 4200 :

The first step is to come up through the fabric:

Pull the floss all the way through:

Now form the French Knot by winding the floss twice around your needle:

Carefully insert the needle back into the fabric a distance away from where the needle first emerged.  The distance away will determine the length of the tail :

Pull all the way through and the French Knot will snug up next to the fabric with the tail straight behind:

That is it!  If you want to make only one Pistil Stitch, you would now secure your floss on the underside of the fabric.  If you want to make several stitches, you just repeat the steps:

and then secure your floss underneath:

I learned this stitch from the book Elegant Stitches by Judith Baker Montano.