I just unvented a way of making a bar tack that I have probably unvented before.
I have three identical pairs of knee socks that I want to keep as pairs, so I set out to make bar tacks at the center back of each cuff.
Upon realizing that the cuffs were actually hems, I put the needle in half an inch below the proposed bar tack, slid it between layers to the top of the bar tack, pulled just until the end of the thread was inside, put the needle in at the bottom of the bar tack and brought it out at the top, pulled until the stitch was flat, put the needle in at the bottom of the tack again, slid it between layers until it came out at the edge, pulled the stitch flat, and snipped the thread close to the stocking, under slight tension so that the end popped back inside.
Easy, quick, neat, no flapping ends, nothing showing on the outside. The hard part would have been threading the needle, were it not that there happened to be needles threaded with the correct colors in my marking kit.
Digression:
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The correct colors, in this case, were brown, red, and orange:
Black: 0 Brown: 1 Red: 2 Orange: 3 Yellow: 4 Green: 5 Blue: 6 Violet: 7 Gray: 8 White: 9
Some folks say the way to remember this is to memorize a naughty sentence in which the first letters of the words are BBROYGBVGW, then memorize which B is black, which is brown, and which is blue. And which G is gray and which is green.
It's much easier to note that the code was created logically: Black, which reflects no light, is zero. White, which reflects all light, is the largest digit, nine.
Brown is the neutral color closest to black, so it's one. Gray is the neutral color closest to white, so it's eight. the remaining six colors are in paintbox order.
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A few years ago, I was more than halfway through marking a dozen pairs of briefs before I realized that a marking tack worked on a single layer is much easier to keep neat when worked from the side that isn't supposed to be seen.