A little beading (part 1)….

One of the techniques that we did with Lyric was beading.   I have done a bit of beading in the past but learned so many new things and lots of things that I was doing wrong!!!

The first thing we learned was to sew on a single bead.  She told us to thread up a bead and then use the needle to place it flush against the fabric.  Then as you push it into place, bring the needle down to the back again……

You then come back up and go thru the bead again and return to the back of the fabric  (never did this before!!!).

Now came a tip that I had never seen…..

In order to tie a securing knot in the back of the piece, you take a small nip of fabric, twist the thread around the tip of the needle three times, hold the twists in place with your thumb and pull the needle thru……SO EASY!!!

We also did a straight line….the method is……  put 4 beads on the piece, do a half back-stitch and come up between the 3 and 4th beads.  Go thru those last two beads and then add two more…..

Next came a curved line.   This technique is the same as a straight line, except that when you do the half  back-stitch, you come up just outside of the curve.  The final trick (and this is a good one) is to run your thread back thru all of the beads when you are finished.   On my piece, the beads were sort of all over the place, but this final step pulled them all together perfectly…..

Next came working with bugle beads.  Lyric reminded us that bugle beads are cut tubes of glass and that the edges are sharp and can easily cut the threads.  The way around this is to always include a bead between each bugle….how easy is that….

Here is Lyric’s beautiful beaded sampler piece…..