Bead Weaving and Unweaving
June 1, 2005 by Tammy Powley
Filed under Beading
I have a new seed bead weaving motto: When in doubt, pull it out!
Im working on one last project for my next book. While I still have some items to make for the gallery section, those in a way are easier to design because I dont have to explain how I made them. I dont need to come up with step-by-step instructions. I can just go with the flow. Designing a project that you then need to be able to explain to someone (a beginning jewelry maker or bead weaver) is a whole other animal.
To top it off, this last project was a request by my editor, who has a wonderful sense of color and design, but who has little experience with seed beads. So what she asked me to try to come up with isnt as easy as she might have thought; at least, its not been easy for me. I was close to tossing in the polishing cloth today when I mentioned my dilemma to a beader friend of mine. She said, Oh, you can do it. Its just going to be time-consuming.
Shes right. Making seed bead jewelry is not an immediate gratification kind of jewelry making technique. Even some of the easier projects in my book take much more time than bead stringing or some of the wire work I do. So, I tackled it again today, pulling out stitch after stitch, and I did make some slow progress. Its starting to form into something now, but Im learning a valuable lesson in patience.
