Friday, February 6, 2009

Solving a Problem

I'm in love with cube beads!
So when Natalia of realisationcreations was having a destash and wanted to offload some cubes I jumped at the opportunity.
I made a couple of bracelets with just cubes,

or cubes and seed beads,


but I remembered seeing a lovely bracelet on the BeadingDaily website.
It is called 'Cubed Herringbone' and was designed by Lorraine C. Menard.
It couldnt be better - I love herringbone (ndebele) stitch and it uses size 8 beads, so it wont take forever to make!

I even had a strand of mixed green colour 3mm czech glass beads.
Perfect!

So off I went with my needle and thread.
The pattern is easy to follow, the instuctions are clear with good illustrations.
My bracelet grew quickly - but then


- I ran out of the 3mm fire-polished crystals, and the bracelet was nowhere near long enough!
Arghhh!

What to do?
I could buy some more 3mm crystals - but I can't get them locally and I was too impatient to send for some.
I could undo it and put 6 or 7 rows of ndebele between the crystals - Who in their right mind ever undoes something and then redoes it??? Not me!
I could make a very long button and loop clasp - that would look silly.
I could just carry on in ndebele without another row of crystals - spoils the pattern.

Or I could use the threads coming out of the cubes as a base for decreasing brick stitch, which would also make a nice base for the loop and button closure.

- so that is what I did -


I only needed to add 5 rows each end and it was long enough.



I added a square green 'pegasus' bead from my bead collection, and it's DONE!



If you are a beader and not familiar with Beading Daily - it's an on-line daily newsletter from the publishers of Beadwork magazine. Go and check it out - there are fabulous patterns (some are free), helpful tips, a shop, forums - you could get lost for hours in there!

2 comments:

Owl and Fox said...

I'm loving that gray one! How long did that take you?

lyptis said...

Very nice! Love the cube beads, very simple(but looks complicated) and all of them got pretty colours!

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