My First Peyote Stitch Project

Where to start? What to do? I decided on a necklace purse or amulet. No pattern. No instructions. Just a folded up dollar for sizing. I looked through my slowly increasing bead stash and selected five tubes. I love texture created by color and I liked the 'bead soup' I made when I poured out the beads. I don't remember if I started with odd- or even-count peyote. I simply started and kept on beading. And beading. It was wonderful! I learned a lot about tension, burying threads, decreasing and making fringe.

I made many mistakes and here are some of them:

- I didn't make the flap long enough. It should have had about three more rows before I started the decreasing.
- I didn't know how to make fringe. I initially did a six bead drop fringe on the flap. My tension was all wrong so they didn't hang right. After creating the bottom fringe (and getting a clue about how to make the beads hang right!) I went back and ripped out (well, cut out would be more appropriate) the fringe. I added a focus bead drop.
- As a result of tearing out the flap fringe and reworking the edge, I bowed out the flap with my buried threads. No one will notice unless an experienced beader looks at it closely.
- My peyote base row for the chain was far too long. All things considered I'd rather have too long than too short!

Despite the flaws this meets the quilters' galloping horse test ... if you can't see any mistakes riding by on a galloping horse it looks fine! Being a perfectionist I generally go by the inspect under a magnifying glass for problems rule. With this first peyote project, I'm giving myself a break. I do like it and I will be making more of these in different colors. What fun!

Except ... I'll try different stitches. RAW ... isn't that supposed to be meat or a camera setting? Hm, I must be a glutton for the agony of learning.

-- Joanna