Peyote Instructions

Although peyote is a basic beading stitch, it takes lots of practice in different manifestations of projects to gain true mastery over all of its forms and capabilities.  In this post I have collected some links to the best descriptions I can find of the techniques needed when constructing a beaded peyote bead. Personally I find I learn best by seeing the animation, having picture references, and trying samples as I go, but everyone has different ways of individualizing their learning.

Animations are a great way to understand a stitch.  Here is a link to some animations for basic flat peyote.  It is really important to understand the flat peyote first, and the concepts of up "up beads" and "down beads":
Silverhill Designs: even and odd count flat peyote animation
Click the triangle on each little screen to start the animation. There are also links to some nice but fairly easy patterns.
Here is a good flat even count peyote diagram from Suzanne Cooper, who has an excellent website with lots of free patterns and instructions:
Suzanne Cooper's peyote diagram

A step up is used in tubular peyote.  Tubular peyote is the stitch used for some beaded beads and for amulet bags. Here is a picture of that the step up looks like: From About website
Below is a picture of a step up in action as the last bead is added to a row.  Basically to do a step up you go through 2 beads:  the usual "up" bead to create the last stitch, then through the first bead you added in that row.  When learning step ups it is much easier if you use different color beads until you learn to recognize the pattern.  Occasionally missing the step up is a really common mistake, even for experienced beaders.

Finally, below is a link to a video showing tubular peyote and a step up.  There are also written instructions in detail below the video. Tubular video
If you are doing a larger project based on tubular peyote, this free tutorial from i-beads explains how the starting point moves diagonally across the beading chart.    There is also a good chart for a step up in step 5.
peyote tutorial from i-beads.

So, I hope these links will help increase skills and comfort level with tubular peyote, and a successful beaded bead. 

Beaded Beads and I'm Beading Again

I didn't bead much this winter because I got hooked on machine embroidery and was also back to my porcelain doll reproductions, but I seem to have the beading bug this summer  and will  do some posts again. There are so many wonderful bead blogs that mine seems pretty ordinary, but I was astounded the last time I checked my stats, so I guess I have a few readers.

I love doing beaded beads and recently offered to teach one for my beading group.  I have made many beaded beads but often just end up throwing them in a jar, because although I enjoy making them I just don't always get around to making something with them.  My challenge to myself was to create at least one usable item from some of by beaded beads as one of the things I showed the group.

I have taught beading informally to friends over the years, but until I started in this beading group my beading social networks were mostly the internet and beading books and magazines.  It has been great to meet with others who like to bead. For the workshop, I developed what I thought was a reasonable set of  instructions for a beaded bead with a wooden internal centre done in circular peyote.  Well...... je me trompe!!

Although these little structural wonders are fairly easy once you get the hang of them, for the type we made knowledge of circular peyote, and of how peyote works in general is really important.  After a few minutes into the workshop I realized that this foundational knowledge was needed (and in my instructions I had assumed people had circular peyote experience), so unfortunately I think some people left a little frustrated.  So, I stewed over what to do, feeling I had let them down (and remember that my professional expertise was as a teacher, so maybe I had really lost it!!)

So after getting over my ruminations of what had gone wrong,  I redid my instructions into what I hope is a "teaching" set, where more detail is given and things like step ups and reductions are explained.  I also am making a larger set of teaching beads (I might even use straws and yarn!!), so I hope to have more happy campers when we meet next week.

The brown beads above were made from a pattern on  Flymouche's blog called "La Boulette" and her French instructions are terrific if you understand circular peyote.  Here is a link to her site FLYBLOG.  The pattern is in the archives for August 2009, but please have fun looking at her wonderful blog.  The necklace is what I made for my challenge.  The central bead is from Beadwork beaded bead #2 in the "Cluster Beaded Bead" by Gwen Fisher, April May 2012 issue.  It is really nice.  A little complicated, I think I have way more thread because I got mixed up and had to get back to the right node a few times, but this is the second one I have made and I really like it.

In my next post I will add some links for my bead group about circular peyote and step ups.