How to Perform Decreases in Square Stitch Bead Weaving

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Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com Today I'll show you how to decrease a square stitch in bead weaving. I have a sample here that I've done don't worry about where my threads are coming out. I actually wove them back in You can see the part a little more clearly which are focusing on. So here I've done a square beads in a square stitch and I decreased as I went up and what the important part about this is if you look at the top down you don't want to see any thread bridges. you don't wanna see threads coming from here to here or over the top. You want it to be nice and smooth. You only want your threads to be coming out of the side and going to the bead below I'm show you how to do that. So I've threaded onto my needle some wildfire thread and I'm going to place a stopper bead on the end. It's really easy to do, just a contrast bead of some sort just tie it with a simple overhand knot. You're just trapping it and be able to undo this later down at the bottom. You want to leave a tail long enough to put a needle onto thread a needle and work it back into your bead work. Tie it off now we do have a video already showing how to do the square stitch I'm gonna really quickly show you how to do it again just because you need to know how to do it before you can go ahead and do the decreases so I'm going to start by putting seven beads onto my needle and of course it doesn't have to be seven to whatever you want for your project it is a little bit better if you're doing decreases, if you want it to be even like a pyramid shape to use a odd number of beads. So there's my seventh bead and that constitutes for me my first row. To make my second row and I'm going to take one bead. I'm going to you go back through the last bead on the first row you see how that creates a little loop and look what happens. It just has it sit right on top there. Now I'm gonna go back through that bead. I'm going to string on another bead on this one I'll go back through the next bead which is on that first row and now I'm gonna go up again to the bead I just strung and as you go work on your tension. Make sure you pull your thread tight. I'll keep doing that. Go ahead add a bead, go back through what is the third bead on the first row. So basically the bead that's gonna be below the one that you are stringing on the second row is what you're gonna go through just pull it and this will look a little wobbly to begin with. When you get more rows on there is it'll straighten out but the first couple rows always do look a little bit wobbly another one on my second row you see I'm just going up again through that bead we just strung. Basically you're hiding your thread bridges what you're doing. If you already know how to do square stitch, you can fast-forward through this until we get to the part that I show you how to do the decreases you really do need a base row like this you need these two base rows so that you have something to you work with when you do decreases. You'll see in a moment why we're going to be hiding our threads as we go so that we get that nice smooth top down view my last bead here we go. I'm a little bit a ways from my stopper. I'm gonna pull it down just so it keeps all my beads in place we have got two rows of classic square stitch. Now our problem is as we want to create the next row. I want to decrease it. So that bead to live right there but if we were to just go ahead and add it like here what's gonna happen is one you're going to have a gap but two yore going to have that ugly thread bridge right there that's not gonna look good from the top down or the side. So we don't want to do that what we need to do is change the the direction of thread to do that you have two choices you can go back through the first bead of our bottom row and this is why you need those two rows come up through the second bead go through the second bead on the second row then you're just gonna come up right through it. It's not going all the way and now we've got our thread right where we want it. So that's one option. The other option is remember the thread was in this position right here and we couldn't go like that it. We actually do an reinforcement row where you're gonna go through the first one then the second one but you're not gonna come out. You're gonna go through all your bottom row until you end up on the outside and then you're gonna go through all the beads on the second row until you get to the bead that you wanna come out of and now you're ready to go up so it's entirely up to you, both work really well. It's just a preference now we're ready to do our first decrease. So take our bead which will be the first bead of the third row. We're join to square stitch like normal because now our threads are in the right position now I'm just gonna go through. Got that bead on there gonna loop around now go up through it again and pull now I'm just going to add another bead just like this was a regular row because it is keep adding beads until I get to the spot where I want which is gonna be a decrease on the other side and I'm not going to have to do anything special for it one more bead and It'll be my last bead so it'll be a nice even pyramid shape. It'll be really good if you're doing Chevron designs as well there's that bead go through it. That row is complete so now we have the same problem if you want to decrease again. I'm actually I'll flip my bead work because I like working from right to left because I'm right-handed Again I don't want to just go like this I wanna get my thread back in the right position I'm gonna go down through this bead here I want to do the reinforcement row so instead of going all the way to the end like so I'll come out one bead prior pull I'm going to go up through my third row all the way to the point where I want to start the next row. I'll do the same thing I did before, I'm going to add one bead This is just square stitch as normal one more bead and I'll complete that row. Do one more for the top for the pinnacle and that should do it one more time, we just have to make sure our threads are in the right positions gonna go down here go through all of those and come up to the one next to the end that we can loop through go through the first one, second but I don't wanna go all the way through the third because I need the thread in this position here. Flip it so I'm doing it left to right for me but if you're comfortable working both directions that's totally fine. So the final bead there you are so at this point all you're beads are attached. You've got this nice decrease. You'll see we have no thread bridges from the top down view and you would just at this point work your thread back into your beadwork and tie it off. We actually have a whole video showing how to tie off and add new threads into bead weaving on beadaholique.com this video here is complete and that is how you do a square stitch with decreases. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!