Free-form bead weaving is probably the most exciting beading technique I ever encountered. And I have never tried to use it for bead embroidery. Not until I had a whole set of lepidolite stones in my possession.
It is somewhat challenging to bead around such an unusual shape of a stone, I thought. That’s precisely why I decided to try it.

Lepidolite Necklace Bead Embroidery Free-form Design

Designing the pendant, and initially, I was thinking only about a pendant bead embroidery, I was facing several problems:

• keeping lines straight around the rough shape of the stone
• beautifully wrapping the stone with beadwork
• creating the design balanced and attractive

Do you think I solved these problems?

After all, the beadwork design is a matter of taste. Some people cannot wrap their minds around free-form bead weaving. I say, give me anything just to practice this technique. I like that every object and every design looks different every time I try free-form. One of my first attempts proves it.

It is simply adventurous to play with free-form bead weaving.

Pendant Bead Embroidery

Lepidolite belongs to the group of mica stones. The stone itself looks like a fragile layered cake of transparent sheets of shiny silica. Purple lepidolite, which I used for my pendant, has a tint of lavender color to these sheets.
It is interesting, how the stone changes when exposed to different light.
This irresistibly modest “shimerriness” captivated my heart.

I stitched the base of the pendant using simple backstitch switching seed beads sizes according to the edges of the stone. This is, probably the only operation I can describe in somewhat clear terms.
When I started weaving seed beads using free-form peyote stitch, I stopped paying attention to my steps. It was all about the flow of the stitches.

Beads

I used a mix of purple and pink colors of seed beads. Size varied from 15 to 8.
Natural beads are represented by freshwater pearls.
For accents, I incorporated some glass chip beads and faceted rondelles.

Design Flow

When I finished the pendant, I felt it looks lonely without a necklace made from the same beads. Inevitably, the quick creative project turned into a time-consuming one just because, it seemed incomplete without a strand of same beads.
The flow continued in the necklace.

What do you think?