Bonsi Jeri

To all fellow beginners and professionals, here's some techniques I would like to share.

So what really is beading? It is the art of attaching one bead to another or even to a cloth. Beadwork dated back millennia ago. Somewhere in Europe, shells and bones where used primarily as beads in this form of art. Most of the time, beadworks could simply be jewelries, some use it as beaded curtains, personal adornments in the form of amulets, bracelets, etc.

Later on, glass beads evolved through time. Modern form of beadwork is used as a hobby in creating purses, coasters, crochet, etc. Different shapes, colors, sizes of beads are now widely available. One can make a simple jewelry in less than an hour but can also take up to weeks for those complex designs.

Various techniques in beading includes on-loom weaving, off-loom weaving, bead stringing, bead knitting, bead embroidery, and bead crochet. On-loom weaving involves locking beads in between warp threads by the weft threads. In off-loom weaving on the other hand, seed beads are woven together into a flat fabric or any 3 dimensional object such as a box, etc. Another style is bead stringing where one puts the beads into a single strand of string. Complex designs include interwoven levels of strands. Beaded embroidery is also another style which utilizes a needle and a thread in stitching beads into a fabric or clothing garment. Bead crochet, as the name itself is simply incorporating beads into a crochet fabric. In this type of style, one can make purses, beaded bags, bracelets, etc. The last technique is bead knitting. It’s simply knitting, where the stitches are decorated with beads. Such beads could be ceramic or glass.

Choosing the type of style you wanted also requires a specific pattern that you should follow. For whatever type of beading patterns you’d like, there’s always a beading program that could help you make your own designs or patterns. A lot of easy-to-use softwares are always available on the internet. I highly recommend bead creator for handling these tasks. It’s very efficient in handling any types of styles you want. It could automatically generate you a pattern out from an image you upload to it. Once you have your pattern, then you could go straight ahead with your beading. Reference.