Beaded Crochet Tips for Beginners
Bead crochet work is a wonderful hobby that can produce stylish and very attractive jewelry pieces even at the beginner level. To make crochet jewelry with beads, you string the beads on a rope and then you work around the beads with crochet stitches to construct the jewelry.
For the beginner, the trick is getting started and getting through the first several rows of bead crochet. The beads tend to clump together and it becomes hard to keep track of which bead is going to be next. One approach to solving this is to begin with a chain stitch, with several beads and then, using a slip stitch, bring them together in a round. Take a screwdriver and push the round of beads down to the bottom, against the handle of the screwdriver. Repeat this for a few rounds until you can remove them from the screwdriver and the rounds will remain untangled as you hold on to the rope.
Begin by stringing a number of beads on to a rope. The number will depend on how long you want the piece to be. Twelve or eighteen inches are lengths for a necklace and six or seven inches for a bracelet. Make a slip knot in your crochet thread and attach the loop to your crochet hook. Chain about 20 stitches and then bring a bead close to the hook. Begin to chain again, capturing the bead. Keep repeating this process until you get the necklace to the length you desire. When you reach the desired length, leave a long tail on the rope and sew a jump ring to each end of the necklace with the yarn needle. Weave in all loose ends. Open another jump ring and use it to attach the two halves of the clasp to the sewn in jump rings on the ends of the crochet.
You can vary the types of beads and the number of chain stitches to create different looks and designs.
