Monday, June 28, 2010

Tutorial: Peyote stitched slide bead



I finished up this copper Viking wire woven necklace today. A friend asked me if I had a tutorial for the peyote stitched slide beads that I make to go with the wire weaving, and I didn't. But I took pictures as I was working today, so hopefully this will help. I found it was hard to take good pictures of such tiny beads!

First, I gathered my materials. I used 2 colors of Miyuke glass Delica beads. These are cylindrical in shape, and very regular. I put them in a watercolor dish while I was working. Scissors, a beading needle, and some Nymo thread rounded out the materials.



I put an even number of beads on my needle. I wanted just enough to go snugly around the wire chain of the necklace. In this case, that was 12 beads.






I ran my thread back through the beads again...











...and continued on through one more bead around.











When I pulled the resulting loop tight, it made a nice circle around the wire weaving. I left a 4-6 inch tail of thread, to weave in at the end of the project. Oh, I probably had a yard of thread that I was working with, so I didn't have to start a new thread part way through the project. The trade off in working with a long length of thread was that I had to deal with the working thread tangling. Running the thread over a chunk of bees wax helped.


Ok. I put one bead on my needle. I skipped one bead in the circle, and ran my needle through the next bead.










With a little convincing, the bead that I just added hopped on top of a bead in the previous row. I continued around the circle of beads in this way. Skip a bead, go through a bead. Skip a bead, go through a bead.









When I got back around to the beginning of the row, I had to 'step up'. I went through the last bead in the row below me, and then also through the first bead of the row I just finished. This is probably the hardest row in the whole project to complete.








The next row around cinches everything into place. Again, skip a bead, and go through a bead. When you get back to the beginning...










...your work should look something like this.










Now, I wanted to start the spiral pattern. Every other bead that I added in this next row was white instead of bronze.









In the next row, again every other bead was white.











After a few rows, I had a nice spiral developing.












I continued on with this spiral pattern until I had the slide bead just about as long as I wanted it, and switched back to all one color of beads. A couple of rows of solid color finished off the project.










I wove the remaining tail of thread back down and around into the beadwork, making tiny half hitches around the working threads. I tugged the knots into the beads to hide them. Then I went back and did the same to the tail end of thread that I had left at the other end.









And there I had it! A beaded bead.



I have used this same technique to make an entire necklace of beadwork, without the wire core. It makes a colorful, light weight, and flexible necklace.

23 comments:

  1. Cool tutorial. I have only ever done flat peyote stitch, and your instructions encourage me to try the tubular variety, Thanks!

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  2. Thanks, Sharon! I think I started with tubular, working over toilet paper cores to make amulet bags. Once you get a good sized tube, all you have to do is zip up the bottom of the cylinder and add straps for a great little bag. Hmm...haven't made one of those in awhile...

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  3. Awesome! I've never beaded delica beads. Will have to try it. Thanks!!!

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  4. The holes are bigger on delicas, so it is easier to get the needle and thread through for several passes. And they are more regular than traditional seed beads, so if you are doing something like loom work that needs crisp even edges they are a good choice. The look is different though--sleeker and more modern.

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  5. perfect! now I have to get delica beads!

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  6. You can use regular seed beads too. I just prefer the look and the hole size of the delicas.

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  9. Great tutorial! So easy! Love the idea of adding to all kinds of necklaces or bracelets including cords.

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  10. Great tutorial; it provides a fun way to add embellishments to a viking tube. Thanks for sharing

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  11. So, what is it that you are putting the beads on? It looks like a friendship bracelet, but it looks like it wasn't made of string. Did you have to weave that, also?

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    1. That is copper craft wire, woven into a flexible tube with Viking Wire Weaving. I've got a tutorial for that on the blog here too. :) But the bead would be nice on a cording, as well.

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  12. Wow! GR8 tutorial. You de-mystified the process! Thank you very much.
    CroShayLady

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  14. Thank you so much for sharing! I love the simplicity in your directions. You’ve made the (previously) daunting idea of tubular peyote totally possible!

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  15. Thank you for posting this. I've wanted to learn how to do this for a bracelet, so, I am going to give this a try! I agree with Bridgettel11 above -- it has been a daunting idea. ;-)

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  16. Thank you for sharing this! Did you remove the copper wire when you finish this or did you just leave it inside?

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  17. You could certainly remove the wire if you wanted to use the bead elsewhere. But the wire was the choker part of my necklace, and the bead the decoration for the necklace, so I left it in.

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  18. Thanks so much, I wanted to do this but couldn't figure it out. Your pictures are really helpful.

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  21. I agree with the 2nd row is the hardest. I am still working on it to get right. Thank you for your detailed instructions.

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