Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary by the kind of art produced. Most often, beadwork is a form of personal adornment, but it also commonly makes up other artworks.
Bead weaving is a set of techniques for weaving sheets and objects of seed beads. Threads are strung through and/or around the beads to hold them together. It can be done either on a loom or using one of a number of off-loom stitches.
Crochet is a process of creating textiles by using a crochet hook to interlock loops of yarn, thread, or strands of other materials. The name is derived from the French term crochet, which means 'hook'. Hooks can be made from a variety of materials, such as metal, wood, bamboo, bone or even plastic. The key difference between crochet and knitting, beyond the implements used for their production, is that each stitch in crochet is completed before the next one is begun, while knitting keeps many stitches open at a time. Some variant forms of crochet, such as Tunisian crochet and broomstick lace, do keep multiple crochet stitches open at a time.
Knitting is a method for production of textile fabrics by interlacing yarn loops with loops of the same or other yarns. It is used to create many types of garments. Knitting may be done by hand or by machine.
Needlework is decorative sewing and textile arts handicrafts. Anything that uses a needle for construction can be called needlework. Needlework may include related textile crafts such as crochet, worked with a hook, or tatting, worked with a shuttle.
Seed beads or rocailles are uniformly shaped, spheroidal beads ranging in size from under a millimeter to several millimeters. Seed bead is also a generic term for any small bead. Usually rounded in shape, seed beads are most commonly used for loom and off-loom bead weaving. They may be used for simple stringing, or as spacers between other beads in jewelry.
Darning is a sewing technique for repairing holes or worn areas in fabric or knitting using needle and thread alone. It is often done by hand, but using a sewing machine is also possible. Hand darning employs the darning stitch, a simple running stitch in which the thread is "woven" in rows along the grain of the fabric, with the stitcher reversing direction at the end of each row, and then filling in the framework thus created, as if weaving. Darning is a traditional method for repairing fabric damage or holes that do not run along a seam, and where patching is impractical or would create discomfort for the wearer, such as on the heel of a sock.
In knitting, casting on is a family of techniques for adding new stitches that do not depend on earlier stitches, i.e., having an independent lower edge. In principle, it is the opposite of binding off, but the techniques involved are generally unrelated.
A selvage or selvedge is a "self-finished" edge of a piece of fabric which keeps it from unraveling and fraying. The term "self-finished" means that the edge does not require additional finishing work, such as hem or bias tape, to prevent fraying.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the oldest of human technologies. To make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fiber from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving, which turns it into cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. For decoration, the process of colouring yarn or the finished material is dyeing. For more information of the various steps, see textile manufacturing.
Brick Stitch, also known as the Cheyenne Stitch or Comanche Stitch, is a bead weaving stitch in which individual beads are stacked horizontally in the same pattern as bricks are stacked in a wall.
African textiles are textiles from various locations across the African continent. Across Africa, there are many distinctive styles, techniques, dyeing methods, and decorative and functional purposes. These textiles hold cultural significance and also have significance as historical documents of African design.
The blanket stitch is a stitch used to reinforce the edge of thick materials. Depending on circumstances, it may also be called a cable stitch or a crochet stitch. It is "a decorative stitch used to finish an unhemmed blanket. The stitch can be seen on both sides of the blanket."
Square stitch is an off-loom bead weaving stitch that mimics the appearance of beadwork created on a loom. Loom patterns and even cross stitch embroidery patterns may be used for square stitch pieces. Because each bead in a square stitch piece is connected by thread to each of the four beads surrounding it, this stitch is very strong.
Bead embroidery is a type of beadwork that uses a needle and thread to stitch beads to a surface of fabric, suede, or leather.
Huichol art broadly groups the most traditional and most recent innovations in the folk art and handcrafts produced by the Huichol people, who live in the states of Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas and Nayarit in Mexico. The unifying factor of the work is the colorful decoration using symbols and designs which date back centuries. The most common and commercially successful products are "yarn paintings" and objects decorated with small commercially produced beads. Yarn paintings consist of commercial yarn pressed into boards coated with wax and resin and are derived from a ceremonial tablet called a nierika. The Huichol have a long history of beading, making the beads from clay, shells, corals, seeds and more and using them to make jewelry and to decorate bowls and other items. The "modern" beadwork usually consists of masks and wood sculptures covered in small, brightly colored commercial beads fastened with wax and resin.
Tapestry crochet is sometimes called jacquard crochet, intarsia, mosaic, fair isle, and colorwork, but today these terms usually describe different techniques. Since the yarns are switched back and forth to create motifs, tapestry crochet fabric looks more like it was woven on a loom than crocheted with a hook.
Right-angle weave stitch, also known as RAW, is an off-loom bead weaving technique. Beads are stitched together with thread only making right angle turns, hence the name. The result is an almost fabric like piece of beadwork. Right-angle weave can be woven with either one needle or two. With single needle right-angle weave, the thread path moves in a figure-eight pattern. For double needle right-angle weave, the threads cross each other along the center bead of each stitch as they head in opposite directions. RAW can be formed into flat pieces, tubes, or 3 dimensional figures. There are also variations on the basic stitch like cubic right angle weave (CRAW) and prismatic right angle weave (PRAW). Seed beads, fire polished beads and crystal beads are common choices in pieces using right-angle weave.
Pin weaving is a form of small-scale weaving traditionally done on a frame made of pins; the warp and weft are wrapped around the pins. Pin-woven textiles have a selvage edge all the way around.
A kandi bracelet is a type of bracelet made usually out of pony beads, and is a popular type of attire in scene or rave culture, particularly kandi culture. Kandi bracelets are traditionally handcrafted, and some view store-bought kandi bracelets as diminishing their meaning of 'unity' They are frequently made with rainbow or lettered beads.
