#pls ignore the cat hair

Bead project update: while I found several amazing patterns for crochet beadwork they presented me a problem: crochet depends on the width of the hook to be in sync with the width of the thread in order to provide the piece stability. There are plenty of tubular designs that can be worked in crochet, but to get them stiff enough to hold the beads in place they require hooks even smaller than my 1.0mm… and the fact that i strung the beads on transparent fishing line makes the stitches hard enough to see at 1mm scale.

These are some sewn bead tubes I made a very long time ago that I wanted to compare to seed bead crochet technique.

The top tiny tube is Tubular Stitch, which secures every bead to the four beads around it. It creates stiff tubes and is ideal for creating buttons, cufflinks, large beads to string onto jewellery etc.

The bottom two are… I’ve forgotten the name of the stitch :( but on the blue necklace only the gold beads are joined, letting the blue beads bend and move freely on their string. On the multicoloured necklace only the gold and the black beads are joined, and their different sizes force the tube the arch and bend to accommodate their width, creating more extreme angles than the blue necklace.

So after realising that making a crochet tube was creating a floppy mess I decided to play about with the beginnings of a netting design. I’ll probably pull this apart and make a circular net whose floppiness won’t matter too much.

However…

Someone’s birthday is coming up and I want to make them a fancy gift! I found my old miyuki delica beads and strung them onto a thread thick enough to pair with my existing crochet needles. Stringing miyuki beads is like night and day compared to those cheap beads! The holes in the middle are wide and even, accommodating both this thread and a cross stitch needle. If you want to do a crochet project with seed beads splash out on the miyuki delicas, their ease of work is worth the cost.

I’ll post pictures of this crochet project as I work on it through the week. I need to finish it by Saturday!