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Macrame is a form of textile-making using knotting rather than weaving or knitting. Its primary knots are the square knot and forms of hitching (full hitch and double half hitches). It has been used by sailors, especially in elaborate or ornamental knotting forms to decorate anything from knife handles to bottles to parts of ships. Macrame is viewed as a more masculine form of craft comparative to traditional knitting techniques, as evident in ancient Nordic tradition.
Cavandoli macrame is a variety of macrame that is able to form geometric patterns and/or free-form patterns like weaving. The Cavandoli style is done mainly in a single knot, the double half hitch knot.
Common materials used in macrame include cotton twine, hemp, leather or yarn.
Sailors made macrame objects at sea, and sold and bartered them when they landed, thus spreading the art to places like China and the New World. Macrame remained a popular pastime with 19th- century British and American seamen, who called it square knotting after the knot they most preferred in making hammocks, bell fringes, and belts.
Macrame reached its zenith in the Victorian era. Sylvia's Book of Macrame Lace, a favorite at that time, urged its readers "to work rich trimmings for black and coloured costumes, both for home wear, garden parties, seaside ramblings, and balls- fairylike adornments for household and underlinens ..." Few Victorian homes went unadorned.
While the craze for macrame waned in later years, it is now popular again, for making wall hangings, articles of clothing, bedspreads, small jean shorts, tablecloths, [draperies, plant hangers and other furnishings.
