Bead Knitting Hatband

posted in: Beads, Knit | 0

My workshop teaching date (Thursday, June 7, 2012) for “Knitting with Beads” at this year’s Estes Park Wool Market is coming closer and closer. The handouts are done and I am sorting out what beads and samples I should bring along for participants to touch, feel and explore. But as usual, my mind is running wild and comes up with more and more designs. I just can’t keep up! 🙂

Chevron Bead Knitting Headband 1
Bead Knitting Hatband

In this case, I was mulling over ideas for a sample that could showcase bead knitting (every stitch has a bead knitted through it, on both, RS and WS rows, so that the yarn doesn’t show at all), a technique that was very popular during the Victorian time period when you would see some amazing bead designs for coin pockets or evening purses.

Chevron Bead Knitting Headband - detail
With bead knitting, no yarn shows

But I was looking for something more practical for our times and came up with this arrowhead/chevron design for a hatband. Here out West, the rodeo season is upon us and we ladies like to dress up in some sparkling Western wear. 🙂

It’s a great little project to try your hand on bead knitting.

After deciding what beads to use (size 6/0 Czech glass beads in 4 colors)) and what kind of pattern I would like to see, it was a surprisingly quick project; about 30-45 minutes of pre-stringing the beads, ~4 hours of knitting, and ~20 minutes of sewing it to the hat. Definitely a good choice for a weekend project.

Prestrung beads
Brown #10 crochet thread and size 6/0 Czech seed beads in 4 colors.

And just to show you how my mind zooms off and gets ideas – for just a moment there, I thought, I saw a beaded rattlesnake emerge from the work in progress… do you see it too?

Snake - nearly complete
Doesn’t this look like a little rattlesnake?

So, keep your eyes open and put down your knitting from time to time. You never know what you will find. 🙂

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