How to Bead Weave a Ladder Stitch Bail

SKU VID-0135
Designer: Julie Bean
In this video, learn how to bead weave a ladder stitch bail. The example shown is on a bead embroidered cabochon, this is a great application for this technique. Easy to do and instantly creates a pendant and focal point.
Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I want to show you to create the ladder stitch bail for a bead embroidered cabochon or a bead focal point. It doesn't have to be a cabochon. In previous videos I've shown you how to do all the different stitches for this and now we need to know how to attach it to an actually necklace. So what you're going to need is the thread you've been using. I've got some k.o. black thread here. This particular method is using two needles. It's going to be a double needled method. I have two size thirteen beading needles and you'll need some of the bead seeds you used in your project to carry along the color theme and make sure everything matches. Here are some really petite little black ones and these things called gold ones. So to begin I've got this pico edge. So to make my bail, I first want to fill in a little gaps. Like if you think of it as little teeth like a zipper. I wanna fill those in first. So I'm going to find an area on my cabochon which is just slightly off-center. I think I'm going to start right here. Take my needle thread it through the pico edge, the little bead right there. Pull it so it's about halfway along my thread. For the bail I'm gonna cut myself a yard of thread I'm going to take one of my little black beads and then I'm gonna go ahead go through the next little pico edge and pull. Just going to fill in that gap. You want more and pull. I have a nice a platform to start from. You can see that that's all filled in and I want to actually go to the process of creating my bail. I'm going to do a ladder stitch. I'm doing the double needle method. I'm choosing to do it this way just because it goes so fast and it's so easy this'll be done in no time. I'm going to take one of my needles and place three beads onto it. I've made sure that I'm pretty much at the center here. Pull those beads down a little bit. Criss-cross my threads. Take my other needle and go in the opposite direction. I've essentially created a loop. I'm going to pull my needle through and pull the beads all the way down. I'm going to tug. It doesn't need to be super tight. And work with the tension of your thread as you go but you'll also see that you have room to go back and adjust your tension later on. In his particular project you usually don't put on this one there's a little bit more leeway. And three more beads pull them down a little bit. Take your other needle and go through those same three beads criss-crossing your threads within the beads. Pull them down. Got a nice little loop right there and just pull those down so they sit right on top of your previous rows. Then pickup three more pull down a little bit. With my other needle go through those same three, criss-cross, pull down. You can see right here that you adjust your tension as you go. See that they're not very tight all you have to do pull those threads and they tighten right up. So you're gonna keep doing the same act of three beads and criss cross your threads, pull-down until you get your beading double the length of the bail that you want. So let's say you want a bail to be this long, about half an inch you would bead an inch because we're going to loop it over and secure it on the back. If you want an one-inch bail you're gonna go ahead and make two inches of this ladder stitch bead. So let's go do that and then I'll show you how to loop it around and finish off your bail. As you can see I've stitched almost an inch for my bail here. I want about an half an inch bail. I'm going to do another row or so. You can see I've just been doing the same process this whole time. I got my three seed beads go ahead and pull them down the thread. I know this is repetitive but sometimes it's good to see it over again to see how it's done. Just pull them down until they're flush against your last row. So I got the length that I want. You can see the tension is still little wonky. Just going to adjust that right now. Make sure I'm happy with the tension at this point. If you have any gaps just cinch them up. You can see it does kind of ripple a little bit, don't worry about that. When you have it hanging on a necklace, the gravity is going to actually pull it down to so it's going to lay flat. We need to loop it ever and connect it to the cabochon again. So what we're going to do is turn it over take one of your needles and go back through those original beads the black ones along the edge here. These are the ones we started with if you remember. Just going to do this. Make sure you go through all the ones you started with. Pull that through. Don't pull too tightly yet because it's going to be a little easier to do this if you know. I have a little bit of a gap right there. I'm going to take my needle in opposite direction. So again we're just criss-crossing This is why we're using a smaller needle we've got a size thirteen beading needle going on here because it just makes it so much easier to go through these beads. Pull again. Now at this point I want to pull both my threads and let that just loop around. Work on my tension and there you go. Pull tightly. You've made a loop. You can see we've got your bail right here we have an area right here you can thread some beads or a chain. So that's all you need to do to create the ladder stitch bail and then to tie off your thread you'll just do it as you do with any other bead embriodery or bead weaving project just your thread back into your bead work and ties it off as usual. We have another video up showing how to do that on beadaholique.com Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!

You recently viewed

Clear recently viewed