So one of the issues I had with Osterland's excellent morning glory/petunia pattern is that morning glories actually have heart-shaped leaves. Unfortunately, french beaded flower making techniques do not naturally lend themselves to this shape, so the author just has you substitute oval or teardrop shaped leaves. —In fact, most of the really interesting french beaded flower shapes have been for leaves. So I set out to create a heart shaped leaf, which is what this tutorial documents.
Start with a 10 bead basic, pointed top, round bottom, but with an extra-long loop that has several inches of beads on it (in this case, about 80 beads)[1]
Add 9 more rows, making the tip very pointed by threading on an extra bead between each row. Note that since you have 10 rows total, you end up at the top of the leaf.
Wrap the spool wire around a 22ga brass stiffening wire or similar; then set up for the second half. For this part of the leaf, you must pay a little more attention to the lengths of the spool wire. Count off 14 beads—10 for the beginning of the frame, and four to act as spacers to make this half of the leaf pointed. Position the spool wire along middle of first (half)leaf; then capture several inches more of beads[2] , and start twisting at the same point as for the other “midrib”[3] in the loop
Twist from loop all the way to base of 10 count. Start making second leaf(let), round bottom, very pointed top with one bead between each wrap.
Continue wrapping. Note roach clip to help hold brass stiffening wire in place. It's also very easy to see in this photo how the spool wire was wrapped around it and then “continues on” to make 2nd part of leaf.
Continue wrapping the second part of leaf till you've finished 10 rows, ending again at the point of the leaf. I've enhanced the image to make it easier to see the double wrap around the basic & stiffening wires.
Continued in Part II.
file created 14may08. Cleaned up formatting 12apr14.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
