Thigh cuffs are pretty cute, and are pretty simple to do.
This post draws a lot on the most useful tie you can learn, the double column tie. So I highly recommend reviewing that one first.
I taught this tie in a class last week, after testing it out a few times. It’s not bad. Not perfect. I’m going to add some refinement in future, and choose a good version of a secondary column tie to finish it. But for now, it does what I want it to do.
First, you want your person to stand or kneel with their arms at their sides. You’re going to need access to their thighs, so I’d suggest that you have them kneel “up” so to speak, so that they’re on their knees with their thighs vertically upwards, or close to it.
Next, take your hank of rope, and begin wrapping around one thigh and the arm beside it. You’re going to have to wrap over both, leading with your bight, and you’re going to need two wraps. How you tie this can differ; for sensual, sexual scenes, I like to take my time, go slowly, create that sense of erotic tension and make the person think about how close that rope is to certain areas.
Basically, what we want to do is create a two column tie, which will cross over and form a knot at the back, between the wrist and the thigh. So when you’re done creating your two wraps, and making sure the bands are nice and even, not pinching skin or leaving gaps, you’ll need to make sure you have enough bight to cross over your working end and create exactly the same structure as in the two column tie.
Once we’ve crossed over our rope, the bight travels under the hand and then back over the wrist to create a cinch.
And once the bight’s back on the other side, that’s when we form our knot. My version involves creating a loop with the working end, running the bight through the loop, under the closest band of the cuff, through the loop again, and then pulling it closed by pulling on the working end. Again, all of this is in the two column tie tutorial; this is just at a different angle, so may take some practice. Brains sometimes get weird on us when we change the orientation.
If you have another knot that works better for you, feel free to use it.
Once we’ve completed the double column tie, we have our first cuff.
Now, we take our working end, and we stretch it over the ass across the back towards the other leg.
At this point, once we’ve reached the other side, we basically need to create another, matching cuff. Or, if not matching, fairly close to the first one, though the design may be different.
So we wrap twice around the arm and the upper leg again.
Bringing the bight back up the other side, we’re going to see two bands of rope; one coming from across the butt, and the other coming from the inner thigh. We want to link those together, creating a flat band across the wrist. So we’re going to take our bight and carefully hook those bands together, by bringing the bight up and over both bands, down on the inside, and then crossing over where we brought it up to create a hitch.
Now that the rope is going downwards, we can turn that into a cinch, similarly to how we did on the other side.
With our bight back on this side, all we need to do is weave the rope around back and forth between the bands, and lock it off. It’s better to do it on the right side of the hitch, so the hitch can form a wee barrier to prevent the cinch from digging too much into the inner wrist.
Pro-tip; when you make the cinch, it’s often nice to wiggle it a bit closer to the butt than to the wrist, because we want to be kind to our models wrists.
The final design leaves you with this nice set of thigh cuffs. The thigh bands lift the butt, and the band going across the back creates this nice symmetry. On the whole, the ass is emphasized. The thigh bands also create great handles.
You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
This design works really well for people who have shoulder injuries and issues that prevent them from being able to have the hand behind the back for any length of time. It also offers a lot of access to the front and back. If you have your person walking around, you’ll want to keep an eye on them, because they can’t catch themselves if they fall.
Important point; when I’ve used this, and I wanted to pull on the rope, I chose the thigh bands, not the butt band. My partner likes pressure across her thighs, so that’s what I’m aiming for. Unless you use a locking secondary column cuff of some kind on the second cuff, when you pull the top band across the butt, it’s going to tighten down and add pressure to the outside of the wrist. Many won’t love that.
I like this version because it’s an easy flow, and it works for what I designed it for, but I think I’ll need to tinker with it a bit so I can add to it and pull at it from all angles. More development in future.
One note I’ll add; once you’ve got the thigh cuffs done, it’s quite fun to add additional rope to the top, such as a band across the biceps, or some kind of harness that gets the upper arms, too. It adds symmetry, and it gives you more opportunity for delicious rope interaction, whilst also restricting your partner’s movement further.
So those are the thigh cuffs. My partner and I quite enjoy them, and you can really take your time with the tying process to make it erotic, if you like. Otherwise, they’re just a great way to tie someone.
