guest post- beaded hand work from Lyric Kinard

I have asked a few of my creative friends to help me out with my blog here and there during my time with a new baby and today's guest post comes to you from Lyric Kinard

I love hand work. Not because I have endless amounts of patience and love peaceful hours of meditative stitchery. Sounds blissful but it’s no part of the reality of mothering five children.

I love hand work because it fits into the five minutes I’m sitting in the carpool line. A stitch stays put when you need to jump up and change a diaper. A tin of beads and a bit of cloth can travel with you during endless hours at music lessons and soccer practice.

Did you see those lovely little loopy yellow beads in the first picture? They are just tooooo much fun to play with and I thought I’d share how to create them with you.

I’ve started with a fun fabric flower; cut, fused, and stitched to a piece of craft-fuse interfacing.

I’ve outlined the petals in a contrasting color of beads. I’m using a size 11 applique needle and nymo beading thread. I find that beading needles aren’t quite strong enough to sew through more than one layer of fabric.

Knot your thread well and bring your needle up from the back right where you want your loopy stack to sit. Give it a good tug to make sure it’s not going to pop through the fabric.

Slide a large bead down the thread. I’m using a green size 6 seed bead.

Load your needle with beads, I’m using ten yellow size 11 seeds here. Use as few as three or as many as you wish to make a long or short loop. Take your needle back down through the hole of the large bead and straight through to the back of your fabric. Pull it tight then repeat the process to create as many looped stacks as you wish. Make sure to knot your thread tightly into the fabric every few stacks.

You can have lots of fun varying the length of the loops, the sizes of the beads, or even making each looped stack into a beaded fringe see tutorial here

You can learn more beading techniques on my DVD workshop Bead It Like You Mean It. You are also warmly invited to pop over to my blog and have a look around - lots of art, inspiration, and more tutorials.

Artist, author, and educator, Lyric Montgomery Kinard lives in North Carolina with her left brained genius of a husband and four of her highly creative and talented children. She insists she is not biased but admits she might be a little addled in the brain.