Beading Challenge! December Edition
Here at Blueberry Beads, we’ve started something fun to challenge our skills and sharpen our minds. Every month we open up our random palette generator and pick the colors we MUST use on our project. Sometimes we’re required to use all of them, sometimes we’re allowed to pick a certain minimum.
This month’s challenge was a whole seven colors! The rules were hit the random generator three times and hope for the best, then pick your pattern.
All seven colors had to be used this time. Most patterns that use that many colors are big and complex so in the interest of keeping within our time limit I chose something that used a simple stitch but was big enough to have seven colors in it and still look good.
Since I started bead weaving, I’ve always been fascinated by geometric beadwork. Implausible feats with beads defying normal beadwork characteristics is a thing I’ve always wanted to try. I had a pattern I found online from another bead weaver who had a blog. And this person, whom I’d come to know as The Screamin’ Squirrel, had a geometric bead weaving pattern called The Winged Star. I’d been intimidated by the idea of learning about support pods and casting on to other objects to hold the form while I crafted it— yet somewhere along the way I gained the confidence to give it a try and this was challenge was the perfect opportunity.
It was a rocky start.
The support pod was a new thing for me and I admit, it was what I was the least confident about. Actually I read the instructions three times and watched a YouTube on it twice and still didn’t quite get it right. However, I did get it just right enough to keep going. Sometimes half of beading is moving forward even if you’re not sure if what you’ve done is correct. There’s nothing wrong with backtracking if you need to. Sometimes you might even find a method to do something that works better for you.
Once I was past the pod, everything got easier.
Once I got past the pod debacle, everything was smooth sailing— almost boring! The nice thing was, every time I changed colors I felt a renewed inspiration to keep going. It was fun getting to share my progress with my friends, who more than once told me that it looked like some kind of alien sea creature.
I did not get the opportunity to photograph the moment I took out my center support. Nor was I able to photo the moment I flipped my sea creature halfway inside out, but I will not share the end result which I am very proud of.
