African Helix

Beautiful Beaded Cord

I learned this neat beading stitch from Carol Wilcox Wells' book Creative Bead Weaving but I believe that it was first described in the book "Those Bad Bad Beads." by irginia Blakelock. These are both excellent books! must"haves for any beadwork library. The stitch is uni#ue in that it's the only one I know in which the beads are only gone through once! when you first $ick them u$. %ll the actual weaving is done by loo$ing over the thread. This makes for a very flexible! comfy tube that makes a wonderful necklace embellished or $lain. I'll include some links to exam$les of work done using this stitch at the bottom of this article so you can get a better idea of what it looks like and what can be done with it. &irst of all you'll need a su$$ort to work around. % regular old $encil should be the $erfect si'e for the number of beads we'll be using. (ow choose two colors of si'e )) seed beads that look nice together. *ne for the "s$ines" +the solid lines that s$iral around the outside of the helix, and one for the background color. I used a matte dark green for the s$ines and red"lined green for the background. The dark green beads turned black in the scan and they actually look better that way. -", .tring on / re$eats of 0 background color and ) s$ine color for a total of )1 beads. Tie the beads in a circle and roll the circle of beads onto a $encil. It should be $retty tight because the first row is smaller than all the others and if it isn't tight it won't give much su$$ort for the subse#uent rows. 2ake sure you align your beads on the $encil as shown in the illustration! with the color se#uence going from right to left. 3ick u$ 0 background color beads and 4 s$ine beads. Take your needle and slide it down behind the thread between the /th and 5th beads in the base row. 2ake sure you always go down behind the thread from to$ to bottom! it doesn't work the other way around. 6old the stitch down with your thumb while you $ull your thread through. 7our tension should be ke$t very firm throughout. Ideally it should be tight enough that you can feel the thread $o$ into $lace between the beads. The white dot marks the first bead in the base row. Com$lete the second row by adding 0 more stitches in the same manner! $icking u$ 0 background beads! 4 s$ine beads and going under the thread between each /th and 5th bead.

This next illustration shows the com$leted 4nd row and the first stitch of the 0rd row. The white dots mark the first beads in the )st and 4nd rows. I turned the $encil a bit so that you can see the first stitch of the 0rd row clearly. 3ick u$ 0 background

beads and 4 s$ine beads. 8o down behind the thread between the 0rd background color bead and the )st s$ine bead in the stitch to the left of your thread.

%gain! $ick u$ 0 background beads and 4 s$ine beads and go down behind the thread between the 0rd background color bead and the first s$ine bead in the next stitch to the left. Continue adding stitches in this manner until your helix reaches the re#uired length. .ome $eo$le take the tube off of the su$$ort after a cou$le of inches but this didn't work for me at all. I ke$t it on the $encil the whole time and 9ust $ushed it u$ to make room as I went along.

To finish the end to match the beginning! add a final round of / stitches using only 0 background beads and one s$ine bead in each stitch. Then run through the four final stitches and tighten. Then weave back into the work to secure. 7ou may wish to run thread through each s$ine from end to end to strengthen the tube. To 9oin the two ends to make a continuous loo$ you need to first remove the first row of sixteen beads you added +do not finish add the extra row of / bead stitches if you $lan to do this,. 7ou will $robably need to remove more than the first row to get enough thread to work with. Try to remove stitches in grou$s of four at a time. Then you must match u$ the s$ines then weave the ends together. This is much easier to do if you $ut both ends on your su$$ort. :se a short $encil for this. If the ends don't match u$ correctly! you may need to add another stitch or two. When you have the s$ines lined u$! come out of the end of one of the s$ines and go down into the end of the corres$onding s$ine. Then use a grou$ of 0 background beads to cross to the next s$ine and go u$ through the end of it and into the end of the s$ine on the other side. Continue doing this until all the s$ines are connected. ;<mily 6ackbarth