Copyright 2004 Eni Oken  www.enioken.com Page: 1
Tutorial 5: Herringbone weave
By Eni Oken - www.enioken.com
This pretty and simple weave (lashing) can easily
be done over almost any kind of wrapped bead,
forming a "diamond" shape. Notice how the front
is different than the back, caused by the regular
lashing. This technique is not my invention, it is
based on french beaded flower techniques and also
in basketry.
Step 1: Create a simple wrapped bead using a
medium gauge wire (for this example, 20
gauge wire was used with a 3/4 inch bead).
Make the wrap longer than you would normally
and try to make both sides identical. It helps to
count how many times you have coiled around
the eye. For this example, each side was coiled
9 times.
Step 2: Attach a length of thinner wire to the
base of the top eye by coiling twice. This
example used 2.5 feet of 26 gauge wire, but
you can use other gauges with good results.
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Step 3: Trim the wire tail at the top and take the
longer length of wire to the bottom eye and loop
once. It's important to always loop over the coils,
to form the herringbone weave.
Step 4: Take the wire to the top once more
and wrap it over the base of the eye again.
This will form ONE complete frame around the
bead. Right now, the frame is rounded, but
soon it will acquire its typical "diamond" shape.
Step 5: Take the wire down and up again
(steps 3 and 4), forming another frame around
the bead. This procedure will be repeated as
many times as needed to form the diamond
shape.
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Step 6: After repeating the frame for about 3 or 4
times, the diamond shape and the herringbone
pattern starts to show.
Step 7: When you can no longer wrap, secure
the wire at the top by coiling twice around the
base of the eye. Trim very closely. This
example shows the wire wrapped around the
bead 7 times.
Notice how the wire is smoothly laid on the
sides of the bead. This is done by taking care
with the placement of the framing wire.
Alternative: if you eliminate the bottom eye, by
just folding the wire instead of rounding it, you
can make a pendant
Enjoy this tutorial!