Saturday, September 21, 2013

Crazy Little Thing Called Beading

Silly Little Thing Called Love…or Beads

Hi all!
Today has been long and I am just now settling down to write. Who knows if this will actually be just a one day entry or a multiple day posting but I will try and squeeze it all out tonight. Thankfully work will not be in need of my attendance until the afternoon so I might just get it done and out to you.
My current bead stitch obsession is Dutch Spiral…. I’ve read about it for a couple of years and never really been interested until I found a YouTube video that made it look not so impossible, and really rather friendly, not to mention how easy it is to make Dutch Spiral your own. Its amazing just how customizable this stitch is.  I LOVE IT.
Now throughout this post I want to include some pictures, I think it only fair to warn you at this stage in my blogging I am not one who can invest in a high priced camera to take beautiful photos. Instead I have my old, slightly (very) water damaged Iphone 4. Which takes…. Okay photographs. However it does struggle with beads because they are sparkly and reflect light.
Warnings aside I wanted to share some pictures/experiences with Dutch Spiral:
What is Dutch spiral:
It’s a mix of tubular peyote and what I like to call “swags” of beads.
The peyote is pretty simple as long as you know any kind of peyote stitches… then you just go in a half circle with it.
The “swag” part is where Dutch spiral becomes super easy to customize because you can do almost anything in the world with it, just with the same beads as normal make them loopy or tight giving you a whole different effect, and then there are accent beads which can alter a piece in even more ways. The point is every Dutch spiral piece that you create can be completely different looking then the one before.
The first pancake:
My first attempt at Dutch Spiral went great; The color pattern was a match to my ‘Flora Bracelet’ currently for sale in my Etsy shop and I was really just kind of playing around with the stitch. I must say when I attempted it I assumed it would be much harder, but in fact it turned out quite well. That being said I have to take out about sixteen lines of it, and have yet to finish the project because I at some point lost a bead on my peyote core inner spiral, a good reason to never bead when tired.
MY second attempt a Dutch spiral was a much more effective result. It was rather quick completion the entire necklace clasp and all within about 14 hours which seems like a very long time for any one my necklace. But in the world of bead weaving that’s a stone’s throw.

 By the third attempt I am already comfortable with some embellishments on different parts.

All in all I find it a great stitch with a abundance of uses.

As always 
JB

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