Alexis Carrel, a French vascular surgeon born in 1873, made significant contributions to vascular surgery by pioneering anastomosis techniques. He was first inspired to solve this problem when he witnessed the assassination of Francois Carnot, the president of France, in 1984 during a political speech. Mr Carnot had been stabbed in the abdomen and lacerated his portal vein. At the time, this problem was beyond the technical skill of surgeons and he died on the operating table. Dr Carrel was a young medical student at the time and practiced embroidery with his mother, a seamstress. He was inspired by the work of embroiders given their tools were finer than surgical instruments at the time. He sourced thinner needles finer threads from a local habadashery and coated them in paraffin to reduce trauma to delicate vessels. Dr Carrel also spent time under the tutelage of his mother and renowned embroiderer Marie-Anne Leroudier. It was here that he learned embroidery techniques and applied them to surgical practice. Thread and needle management were closely studies in a similar fashion to how one would practice surgical techniques. The use of an embroidery circle to distribute tension led to his development of the triangulation technique to evenly distribute tension and sutures while holding vessels open to reduce the risk of capturing the back wall. In 1912, Alexis Carrel received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work and his contributions laid the foundation for modern vascular surgery.