All about jewellery making

Despite their strikingly complicated appearance beaded spiral ropes are in fact really quite easy to produce.  Not only do they offer the opportunity for experimenting with the most glorious colour schemes but they are very satisfying to make, especially since there is so much scope for variation by altering the sizes of the beads involved in the project.

For simplicity’s sake I am going to show you how to make the basic beaded spiral.  You can see from the examples of beaded spiral ropes that I have previously posted that alternative sizes of beads have indeed been used.

N.B.  Before you begin you need to make a brief assessment of your materials since the thread used will need to pass through the core beads more than once.  Sometimes, depending on the beads and the thickness of the thread used (I usually use Nymo), I pass the thread through each section of the spiral rope twice (meaning that the core beads contain three thicknesses of thread whilst the beads that ‘climb’ the rope only contain two) as this provides extra stability.  You need to judge what is best for your particular piece.

For the purposes of this tutorial I am going to use two colours of beads to make the process of adding beads to the spiral rope as clear as possible.  If this is your first attempt at a beaded spiral rope I suggest using size 8/0 seed beads as these are a reasonable size to handle and will comfortably take multiple strands of thread.

Step 1 - the ’stop’ bead
The purpose of the ’stop’ bead is to prevent beads sliding off the end of the thread.  Here’s how its done:

Step 2 - starting the beaded spiral rope
Add three colour A beads (beads 1, 2 & 3) to your thread.  These are your ‘core’ beads.  Please see diagram below.

Step 3 - adding the first set of ‘climbing’ beads
Now add one more colour A bead (4) and three colour B ‘climbing’ beads (5,6 & 7) like so:

Step 4 - beginning the beaded spiral
Now take your thread back up beads 1, 2, 3 and 4 (so that bead 4 now joins the rest of the core beads and 5, 6 and 7 ‘climb’ along the edge) as shown in the diagram below:

You have now completed the first row of the beaded spiral rope.

Step 5 - ‘cimbing the rope’

In order to continue ‘climbing’ the beaded rope you need to add the next set of ‘climbing’ beads.  This is done just as in step 3 and the additional beads are numbered 8, 9, 10 and 11 in my diagram.  Once you have threaded them on take your needle through bead 2 and draw the thread up core beads 3, 4 and 8 (Please see my diagram as this can get a bit confusing!  The technique is really simple when explained visually!)

So following the logic of the beaded spiral rope the next row will add beads 12, 13, 14 and 15.  The thread will be taken through core beads 3, 4, 5 and 12.  For each row you take the thread through the next three core beads numerically plus the first bead of the ‘climbing’ set you have just added.

Keep going until you have your desired length of beaded spiral rope!

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Lately I have been getting back into beadweaving and enjoying its therapeutic qualities.  Top of my list have been spiral ropes as I just love the final effect achieved by what is essentially a fairly simple stitch.  I couldn’t show them before because the blue one was a present for my Mum on Mother’s Day - the beautiful blue shades made quite a striking eyeglass leash.  Here is a picture of the whole piece:

It was difficult to gauge the appropriate finished length but Mum was very pleased and when she tried it on it fitted great.  Wasn’t sure if it was a bit too flamboyant but she loved it.  Watch this space for a tutorial on beaded spiral ropes coming soon!

Recently I have been working on this necklace.  It was to be a new piece to wear for the University concert last night but I did not finish it in time.  This was my first attempt at creating a necklace from the St Petersburg chain beadweaving stitch featured in the April 2007 edition of Bead and Button.  My version of this beadwoven chain is made up of fire-polished faceted beads and size 11/0 seed beads.  Although Bead and Button suggested using 3mm faceted beads I only had enough 4mm so I used those instead.  This worked out fine although the final beadwoven fabric might lay slightly flatter by using the smaller size.  The heart bead is Murano style foiled lined glass (from my shop) and completes the piece which was inspired by the rich golds that can be found incorporated in Venetian glass designs.  Ultimately I am pleased with the result and I will probably wear it for the next concert instead!

I have just finished making this set of Christmas jewellery for myself to wear over the festive period.  The pattern is from the latest Bead and Button magazine on p.48 and is called ‘Crystal Showers’.  I made the earrings by completing just one unit of the design before attaching them to the ear hooks.  The technique is right angle weave and is quite easy once you get the hang of the pattern.
 
You can probably see from the picture that the crystals I used are rather uneven.  These are some I am using up as they were to be stock for my shop but I do not consider them good enough quality to sell.

I chose red and gold as my colour scheme as I think these are especially Christmassy colours and will add a bit of glitter to my outfit.

It is unlikely that I will get another opportunity to post here before Christmas so I hope you all have a fabulous holiday and a joyful new year.

These right angle weave beaded earrings were made using a pattern by Marcia DeCoster available from the Beading Daily site.  They are called ‘Tesserae earrings’.  My pair is not exactly the same as those illustrated as I had to improvise a bit with the beads.  I did not have any size 15/0s so the centre of the shapes are without a border.  I tried with size 11/0s but they just bunched up unattractively. 

I used a pale pink seed bead for the back of my earring but they were a slightly different size to the pink-lined blue Tohos on the front.  This meant that joining the two right angle weave sections was not as easy as it might have been.  If possible I would definitely use the same make of beads to alleviate this problem.  The main right angle weave sections were woven using 0.10″ monofilament which gave a nice stiff fabric.  When it came to putting the two halves together I changed to nymo as it was no longer possible to push the monofilament through without a needle. 

Despite all the alterations and uneven bead sizes I am still fairly pleased with the result and wore them yesterday.