How to Sew Beads

Sewing beads are a great project for embellishing clothing and decorating household items. You can add beads to your window treatments. You can add beads to your table clothes too. You can turn add a bit of pizazz to your casual clothing. You can also turn a plain dress into a high end couture piece. Here are instructions on how to sew beads.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Beads
• Beading Needles
• Beading thread
• Fabric or clothing
• Embroidery loop

1. Decide on a pattern for your sewing your beads. You can find a pattern online or in a pattern book, or you can draw a pattern yourself. You can even decided to skip the pattern altogether and use a random design. A planned pattern however, will probably be simpler to execute and give you great results every time.

2. Draw your pattern on tissue paper. A quick and easy way to sew a bead patten onto a piece of fabric is to transfer the pattern to tissue paper and attach it to the fabric. Use colored pencils to indicate a change in bead color. Sew the tissue paper to the fabric with a few large stitches that you can remove later.

3. Place your fabric and pattern on an embroidery loom. Very gently place the fabric and pattern on an embroider loom being careful to not tear the tissue paper. Make sure the pattern paper and the fabric are taught and smooth.

4. Begin sewing your pattern. Thread your needle making the length of thread two feet long. Knot the thread and insert the needle into the back of the fabric, anchoring the thread. Pull the length of thread through the fabric.

5. Begin Beading your pattern. Place a bead on the needle, push in down the thread to the fabric and then push the needle back through the fabric. Push the needle back through the fabric and sew another bead to the fabric.

6. Knot the thread in back after every few stitches to keep the beads in place and continue until your pattern is complete.

Tips & Warnings

• Practice beading on scrap fabric before beading the real thing.
• Seed beads are very small, and you will need more beads than you think you will need to decorate a garment. It takes 50 beads to cover one inch of material for a dense pattern.

[AHermitt]

on 7/11/2008 I just make a tiny stitch and pull the needle through the loop.

[JMButler1728]

on 7/11/2008 Beads make lovely additions. The whole article was helpful, but step 6 was particularly so. What sort of knot do you use when working with seed beads? Thanks for the information!