Beaded spiral rope tutorial
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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