Long picots are fun to play with and one of the effects which can add some real impact to your designs is double picots. This is in fact a misnomer since the double picot is actually formed from a single very long picot.

It will be necessary to get out your measuring gauges or to make one from a strip of card or template plastic (the kind you would use for a patchwork quilt). Just measure with an ordinary 30 CM ruler - you want the card to be either double the height of the picot in width (if you are measuring between double stitches) or the actual height of the picot (if you are measuring with the card held at right angles to the stitches, standing on the thread). These picots need to be at least 1.5 to 2 cm long for full impact.

Basically all you do is make the picot, then further along in the work join into it. It will form a pair of loops as in the picture below.

In this case, the double picots were formed along the edges of the chains; 2 cm picots were made and the picots were joined to next chain each time.

Double picots can also be joined just one or two stitches away from themselves, to form Kim's Picots (as they were invented in the 1990s by Kim Dixon Wright of the Ring of Tatters. Kim sadly died some years ago but his technique lives on!). In that case they will form a pair of picots one within another with an effect indistinguishable from a normal picot.

Quadruple picots can be formed by making two very long picots one after the other with one double stitch between them. Make a couple of double stitches, then join to the second picot, make one double stitch, join to the first long picot. The first long picot needs to be about twice the length of the second one.

I have also made double picots jumping from one split ring to the next in a row on either side, to form a very attractive frill effect.

Another idea would be to make the double picots in a line along the edge of the work in a straight edging. Then make another length of the same edging with long picots but this time to loop them through the double picots in the first edging before you join to the long picot! This would create a very attractive centre for a bookmark.

This technique is fun to play with and I am sure you can think of other effects and ways of using double picots.