ABACUS
BRACELET
About the Project...
The Square Stitch is one of the better bead
weaving stitches to begin with. It is a good
stitch to give you a sense of how to hold
your piece. It is a good stitch to get a feel
for managing the tension of your thread, as
you weave through your project. It is easy
to create patterns and to read these patterns
on a graph.
The Square Stitch mimics the pattern of pieces
done on a loom. The Square Stitch can utilize
patterns developed for Loom, Cross Stitch
or Knitting. Because each bead is woven together
with the 3 beads around it, thus forming a
square, it is very strong.
There is little concrete information about
the Square Stitch prior to the early 1990's
when it began showing up in instruction books.
The Bead Society of Great Britain does have
an earlier illustration of how-to-do the stitch,
but no information in the organization of
the stitch. Some people say it can be traced
back to early African beadwork and some work
dating back to the 15th century beadwork out
of England.
The Square Stitch lends itself to uniform,
square cut beads, such as cubes or delicas
(cylinder beads). These will produce even,
straight rows. With rounder beads, it is more
difficult to maintain a tight thread tension.
These rounder beads can often produce a slight
curve to your piece, as well.
In this bracelet, we
will be make a 6 ½” strip, with
five starting and five ending rows of 3mm
cube beads. When we add a clasp, this will
make the bracelet fit comfortably around a
7” wrist. The instructions detail steps
for making a bracelet for a 7” wrist.
To make a shorter bracelet,
say for a 6” wrist, we would use fewer
starting and ending rows. In this case, we
would use two starting and two ending rows.
To make a longer bracelet,
say for a 7 ½” wrist, we would
add 3 more starting and ending rows, for a
total of 8 rows each.
In the ABACUS Bracelet
project...
LearnToBead
Goals:
-
Basics of Square Stitch
--- How to hold your piece while working it
--- How to create negative and positive spaces
--- How to add different size and shape beads
--- How to add a simple edge embellishment
--- How to add thread
--- How to finish off your piece
--- How to add a clasp
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