Floral Fantasy Turns Into A Beaded Nightmare

July 22, 2022, 6:54 pm
Filed under: Floral Fantasy, Other People's Pieces

Well, nightmare is too strong. However, pulling out beads you stitch through twice is not easy.

I was trying to get full coverage with the beads. But the 8/0 seed beads were too big for clusters of 5 even on 14 count. And, it looked messy.

So, in the May/June 2021 issue of Needle Pointers, Marilyn Owen had written an excellent article on various beading techniques in needlepoint. I thought I would try beaded basketweave with the same 8/0 beads (still on 14 count). But, as Marilyn said, that stitch is only good in small areas because it gets quite cramped. So, once that happened, out they came – again and I switched to 11/0 seed beads. Finally, it wasn’t too cramped. For a self-proclaimed non-expert, Marilyn was spot on.

I wanted full coverage and it is covered! I estimate that there is about 800 beads on that one flower. I used the beaded basketweave method which employs a cross-stitch to attach the beads following the grain of the canvas to turn beads causing the vertical canvas thread to raise the beads above the adjacent horizontally placed beads. It did take some time too but I got through it ok.

Once the beads were done, the center diamond waffle got lost. So, I had stitch over it a second time. Much better.

Considering that the first flower required that many beads, I knew that I would not have enough to cover the entire second pink flower. So, I had to go in another direction. The Partial Eyelet with Crosses is from Needlepoint Dictionary of Stitches by Susan Sturgeon Roberts. I used 3 shades of pink Sparkle Rays (SR26, SR58, and SR57) to create shading. I filled in with a Raibow Gallery thread from a 6-thread card, maybe 24 Karats, possibly a discontinued color. I wanted to tie in the pink beads so I put one in each eyelet center.

As I had hoped, one project is done before I leave for Seminar where I will be starting two new ones. It’s a small one at 4″ square. Probably going to frame it. We’ll see.