Freeform beading and wire crochet

This is a collection of the links I've found (plus a small amount of my own content) on freeform jewelry making (and other stuff I like) since the information seems to be scattered everywhere.

Before you do any sort of freeform beading, you'll need some bead soup, a mixture of different types and colours of beads to draw from. Of course it gets a little more tricky if you're like me and don't want the overall colour of your piece to be uniform (For example, you want to shade from blue to green to yellow) Depending on the situation, you can either draw beads separately or have several bead soups, or a mix of both.

Every technique used here (except "Other" :) ) is fairly easy and has good, easy to find instructions online. Most pictures are my own work because I'd feel weird using other peoples pictures. They are not necessarily representative of a given technique!

Wire crochet/knitting

I can't knit so this is all about crochet. Given the similarity I'm sure most of this is still applicable to knitting. I do know you can use knitting spools with wire to create tubes of beaded wire.

So. First learn to crochet with wool (It's cheaper). I used a book, but there's heaps of sites out there. Even just learning one stitch is enough to get started with wire crochet!

How to with Wire is the only good site I've found for general wire crochet. I couldn't find any instructions for the kind of necklace I wanted, so I made my own freeform wire crochet instructions.

A girl I met on the crochet lj community made a nice, simple circlet using 2 rows of crochet and a few beads but I've lost the link.

Other freeform with wire

Because there's no set way to do this I suppose it's not surprising that I couldn't find many links! These freeform ring instructions look like they might be useful for other things but I haven't tried them. And no I didn't make the bracelet, I've yet to do any non-crochet wire-work.

Peyote beading

Most freeform thread beading seems to be done with peyote stitch. There's several different sorts of peyote, and I don't know the difference! The one I learnt (through googling "peyote") is quite easy.

The best freeform instructions seem to be at the whimbeads freeform class, they also have some ideas at About and Julies Freeform bracelet.

The way I do freeform peyote is a little different. I peyote normally until the chain is 2-3 beads wide, then peyote at right angles making it thicker rather than wider, so the resulting chain is more 3D. Plus adding chainy bits and stuff here and there. There's a few examples in the links section below.

Freeform Spiral rope beading

First, learn to spiral rope. There's two sorts I know of, traditional (as pictured above) and with no central strand. I have yet to find any examples of freeform spirals other than my own attempt as pictured here! The advantage of this technique is that because the outside beads just hang there, you don't have to worry so much about making sure the different sizes of beads all sit nicely together. The disadvantage is that while you can go wild with bead choices the actual structure is set.

Other beading stitches

This is my first attempt at free-form beading with thread, in square stitch. It was less than successful, and I moved onto peyote which worked much better. I've seen brick-stitch suggested but from what I can see it's much like square stitch and wouldn't suit freeform either.

I found right angle weave too tricky, but the freeform at Morticias Magical Bead Tour looks quite nice. The effect seems rather like peyote except that the direction of the beads isn't uniform, and it's less suitable for creating "bridges".(Little mini-strands that go from one part to another)

There's no rule saying you have to stick to one stitch per piece of course...

Pictures

Not all of this is freeform, some is simply wire/beaded jewelry which I think is interesting or pretty.

First off is my work. (Many of which are used as pictures on this page) A more complete list of jewellry I've made (including non-freeform stuff) can be found here. And now for other peoples.