Beading (Manek) Tutorial – Part 2: Border Beading

Continue from Part 1: Preparing The Frame & Canvas

After having your frame and canvas prepared, shoes-face traced out, the next step is to sew a stretch of beads along the shoes-face outline like the picture shown below.

You need:

1. Japanese seed beads size 15/0 for the border
2. Very fine needle so that it can go through the hole of the seed bead
3. White color quilting thread
4. Needle threader (The needle’s eye is so small that you will appreciate having this threader in hand :))

The sewing method is to simply adapt the technique of backstitching, but with thread drawing through the beads on the working surface.

Pass through a 1-strand of quilting thread to the needle’s eye and tie a big knot at the end of the loop to create a 2-strand cord. The big knot is just to make sure that the knot won’t come out from the cross-stitch canvas. Draw the needle up at a distance of about 2 bead-length (1) from the start point (2). I didn’t take any pictures to show the start point, so please assume that the last bead on the line is the start point.

Pick 2 beads and sew them back to the start point (2). The picture shown below is pointing at the wrong place, sorry, didn’t get a good picture to show either :p I was trying to show you that I picked up 2 beads and not where I am pointing at…

This one shows better, pull the beads all the way down to the canvas by the backstitching.

Complete 1 backstitch with 2 beads per stitch. Notice that the beads are crooked but stay on the line. Don’t worry, we are going to do some magic to get them straightened up later!!!! But before the magic can begin, you need to finish beading the border until the end.

….bead…. backstitch…bead…backstitch….bead…. backstitch….bead…. backstitch….bead…. backstitch….bead…. backstitch….bead…. backstitch….bead…. backstitch

Once you have finished a line of the border, pass the needle through all the beads along with it. Please make sure that your thread is long enough to go from one end to the other.

Since the needle is not long enough for you to pass through all the beads in one go, do it in batches of about 15 beads each time.

Pull the thread and you will see that all the beads straighten up nicely… no more zigzag…

Do the same to all the borders of the shoes-face outlines.

Remark: Only the top and bottom outline need to do a border bead. The sides are not required since it is going to be glued into the sole by the shoemaker. If you are making a closed-toe type, there is only one border at each shoe-face.

Now you have finished with the border, the next step is to fill up the shoe-face with a pattern….

To be continued: Part 3 – Interior Beading…..