Saturday, September 22, 2012

Hurray for Fall Sale

Hurray for Fall Sale
Just because Fall is my favorite time of year and I appreciate my customers
so much, I'm having a "Hurray for Fall" Sale.

Randomly selected patterns will be on sale from now, September 22 until the full moon, September 30.

These items may stay the same for the full sale period or other items may
take their place at any given time.  I'm nothing if not inconsistant! LOL
Have fun shopping.

http://www.beadpatternsboutique.com/index.php?cat=40&shop=25

Oh, by the way, the new bracelet I posted about yesterday is one of the sale items and it will definitely remain on sale the full period.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Windmill Bracelet

I love fall. The air is crisp and fresh in the morning and it's not too hot or too cold to be outside any time during the day. Even though it's the ending of the growing season it seems to be the beginning of my creative season.

This bracelet is the result of my creativity from last year. Yeah, I got sidetracked. Sometimes a design just won't come together in peyote/brick stitch and I have to go to loom/square. The problem with loom/square stitch is 1)I don't have a loom. I've thought about buying one for several years and I've found one or two that I think I'd like but always have other things to do with the $50 to $75. And then of course there's the learning time. I don't know how long it would take me to get the tension even on every row and get over that feeling that I need a third hand.
2)Square stitch is tedious and fiddly any way you approach it. I have instructions from several different sources that use a couple of different methods but I find the thread build up in the beads with all the back stitching makes it hard to run a stabilizing thread through the 2 last rows like the instructions all say.

Finally on the last half of the last repeat I decided to try something I hadn't tried before and hadn't seen any instructions for. Pick up 1 bead, pass back through the corresponding bead in the previous row pass forward in the bead just added. The row you're working looks a little wobbly at this point. When you get to the end, pass back through all the beads in the previous row and forward through all the beads in the row you just worked.

I find that even with Delicas, the beads are various thicknesses depending on the finish. To help keep my rows even, I put a needle through the last row, (make sure the needle is not bent)then ran my thumbnail between the last two rows while pulling the slack out of the thread. Still fiddly, but it went much faster and I didn't have as much problem keeping the edges even.

The pattern for this bracelet is finished and is available in my Craftsy Shop.

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