GetCrafty Craft Facts

Q: Has anyone heard of a beading graph paper? It would have little squares arranged like bricks, alternating back and forth from row to row. I would like to find a website to download a drawing to print on my PC. Barring that, a mail order source would do.

A: I recently purchased a book called "A Beadworker's Tool-Book" it contains graph paper for a number of different sizes of seed beads and seven different stitches including Peyote, Netting, Right Angel Weave, etc. The author says that the graphs are a "true representation of your beads in both shapes and size." For each size bead there is a page of graph paper of the actual size of the bead and a page shown of twice the actual size. There are different pages for seed beads, delicas and hex cut. I haven't played around with it much so I don't know if it's all it claims to be. The pages come with permission to reproduce for personal use. The Reference for the book is : A Beadworker's Tool Book Fire Mountain Gems sells preprinted tablets of just what you need. I ran across it in their latest catalog. I have also found that graph paper works well for this you just fill in the ovals any spacing you need. Particularly well for Blackfeet earring patterns as they shift from "brick wall" to straight fringe. There are at least 3 kinds of graph paper available. Fire Mountain Gems carries all three. Tandy Leather carries paper for loom work. The only problem I find, is that when creating a design for earrings which uses the brick or Cheyenne stitch followed with dangles, I have to cut and paste or just graph the harder part. I'm looking for a good computer programmer to design the "perfect bead design" program that will have a print function. I have some specific ideas of how I want the program to work, but I know very little to nothing about programming.