Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and I'm going to show you how to do spiral crochet with beads here is an example of a bracelet using this technique and you can tell it's really pretty there's actually four different colors of beads in here. There's a matte and a shiny in the same color and that's repeated twice and so I won't to show you how to do this what you're going to need is your gonna need some type of thread. You can use pearl cotton, Super-lon, whatever you want and I suggest when you do this technique to begin with to start with a little bit of a stiffer thread like Super-lon it's going to be a little easier for you to see what's happening and just to do the technique also to start pick four very different bright colors so that you can see your pattern and follow the sequences a little bit easier than doing something with more of a blend or a complimentary color palettes, you want to use some contrast just to start and then you can choose what colors you want for an actual project once you get the technique down so here's a sample of what we're going to be making with these colors, you can see it create a really nice spiral effect and to begin this what you're going to need to do is you need to preload your thread with all the beads you need for your entire project when you're doing a project like a bracelet you might wonder how do you figure out how many beads you're going to need to begin with and the way you're going to do that is you can do a little tester, you're going to do a little segment which is half an inch, an inch however much you want to do then count the beads and then multiply that by however long your piece is so if this is about three quarters of an inch, my bracelet is about six-and-a-half inches, I would just take this number of beads per color and multiply that out, so figure out exactly how many you need to preload I've preloaded my beads and I just done that by adding the colors, so I have a pattern going of four different beads. I have blue followed by yellow followed by a turquoise followed by a red so that is a pattern of four and I just repeated it again and again on my Super-lon so to start you're going to make a slip knot to do that you want to leave a tail of about eight to ten inches just wrap the Super-lon on your cord or whatever you're using around your two fingers pull the tail through don't pull it all the way through just to create this knot and that is the slipknot. It's adjustable insert the crochet hook into the knot and pull tight now we're going to chain stitch four chains with beads so to do that add more slack on the cord and going to wrap it around my fingers like so, I'll show you that again, around the pinky across the front of your palm around your index finger and back out so you can hold it. This will allow you to pull the thread nice and easily so I'm gonna pull down four beads so they touch my crochet hook wrap the cord around my fingers pull all but the first bead up towards my finger so it's caught there yarn over the crochet hook pull it through the loop and that's the first chain stitch with the bead slide down the second bead repeat so yarn over pull through the loop add the second one third one yarn over through the loop I've got three chain stitches with beads and I'm going to do the forth one yarn over through the loop now I want to change the orientation of my thread so that my tail is facing up and away from me keeping the beads in the chain stitches on the hook I'm just going to rotate so now got my tail facing up and away from me I've got my yarn going down towards the back take my crochet hook and slip it under the red bead got one-loop for the red bead on my bead hook and I've got my original loop from where I started on there squish those together so you form a loop you've made a circle take your thread which is attach to this spool and bring it says goes between your blue bead and you're red bead and this is why you want to do these with distinct colors so you can keep track of what you're doing so pull that thread so that goes between the two beads and now you're gonna wanna sliding down your next bead which is a red one and cause the thread to go over the loop this is the hardest step of this entire process 'cause you're really just finagling this trying to make it work catch that thread and pull it through both loops on your hook, so I went through one went through the second one now we're gonna repeat that process we're gonna go through our turquoise, the loop that's not connected to the turquoise bead. Now again we've got the two loops on the hook best slide down our next bead which is turquoise and we want that to fall between the two loops on our hook and cross over them yarn over put through both loops now we need to do the next one if you're ever confused about which is the next one to do because as you can see right now this does not look like a spiral. this looks like a big mess whichever bead your going to pull down next which is the yellow will be the loop you're gonna go under already on here your crocheted spiral which of course doesn't look like a spiral right now so if you're confused just look at what color the bead is that's going to come down next so we need to make sure there's two loops on our hooks so we need to go under the loop that's attached to the yellow bead pull down the next yellow bead cross it over your hook and go through the two loops so now what one do you want to do next it looks like the next bead is going to blue go under the loop which is attached to a blue bead right now it doesn't feel like you're doing a nice a flowing crochet so if you're feeling that this is wrong just keep going the first I did this I torn it out about six times before I just force myself to keep going and eventually a spiral pattern emerged and I was so happy so again I pulled down the next bead and crossed my thread over my hook and the two loops which are on the hook yarn over and pull that through the two loops keep rotating so my next one is gonna be red I need to go under the red bead and get that second bead on now I got two loops on my hook pull the red bead down cross the thread over your the two loops on the hook catch it and pull it through the two loops that are on your hook and again you can maybe start to see a spiral happening but it's still not looking like much so the next one is turquoise so what you start to see as this pattern starts to emerge you've always want your bead that goes under to be on the right of your hook if you're doing this right handed so that yellow bead is to the right of the two loops on my hook pull the next yellow bead down crossover catch that thread and pull through do the blue one the bead is to the right drop the next blue bead and crossover and pull through again got the two loops the red beads to the right of the hook directly to the right of my hook slide the next red bead down and catch thread and pull through just keep doing this time and time again just can't keep doing it, if you get lost look at which bead is going to fall next and you know that's the one to go under I'm going to do a couple more because this is a rather tricky technique but you can see we are getting an spiral effect to help your tension as you do it, go along you can go ahead and loop the thread and go around your fingers just so that it holds nice tension it's totally optional, it's much easier to do once you've already built your base slide down a blue bead loop it around my fingers for my tension two loops on pull that blue bead between the two loops and pull through slide down the red bead and do the same thing one more and I'll show you how to finish this so let's say that you got the spiral as long as you want it to be for your project pull a little bit of extra slack on the loop that's connected to the hook then what you're going to do is you're going to cut your thread with about an eight-inch tail take that tail put it through the loop and pull and just like that you have both ends secure and the beads are not gonna fall off to make this bracelet where I attached a clasp I simply went ahead and thread my cord which here was pearl cotton through a big eye needle and I just looped it around a couple times stitched it then worked my thread back into my bead work it's as simple as that. It was really easy to do that's how you start spiral crochet with a chain stitch how you actually create spirals and how you tie it off. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
