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Crocheting with beads is a great embellishment and adds glamour to any homemade crocheted item. To crochet with beads, you need to start with a pattern and practice with beading to make sure you feel comfortable with this new type of crochet.

While it is not difficult to crochet with beads, it can be awkward at first and need a while for you to grow accustomed to it. First choose a simple pattern that has bead work in it to learn how to bead in your crochet. After you become comfortable with the beading, you can add beadwork to any if not all of your crochet patterns.

First start with a pattern that uses larges beads and yarn so you can see all of your work and stitches. Then you will feed all of the beads onto the yarn before you ever start crocheting. This is an important step. If you decide to use a pattern that has many colors of beads, be sure to feed the beads on backwards from their pattern. However, I recommend only sticking with one color so you can be sure to concentrate on your work instead of being side tracked by the issue of beading patterns.

After you feed all of the beads onto the yarn, you can now begin to crochet. Start with your foundation and work normally until you need a bead. As you work you will need to pull out more yarn, and your beads will get in the way. That is what I meant by the crocheting being difficult at first. Bead crochet can be time consuming because of the pushing back of beads.

Once you reach the first stitch that has a bead in it, be sure to realize which side of the work your bead needs to be on. This will decide whether or not you need to crochet the bead at the beginning of the stitch or the end. If your pattern specifies, that can help immensely, but if not you might have to figure that out for yourself.

If your bead needs to be on the front of the stitch, you will need to crochet the bead at the end of the stitch. However, most patterns call for the bead to be worked into the back of the stitch because it is easier. For that, you can just push the bead up behind the last stitch, and crochet the next stitch as usual. The bead should be secured if you made sure to keep the yarn taught. This is also an awkward part of the crocheting steps with having to hold the bead as you crochet the next stitch.

There are other ways to crochet beads into items, and your pattern may specify how to crochet the bead into your work.

By just crocheting the bead in between stitches, you should be able to put beads into any pattern. The only thing to remember is that this will place the bead on the back of the stitch, so if you want the bead on the front of the work, you will have to crochet the bead in while you are crocheting the back of the piece.

Using beadwork is most common with thread crochet to make jewelry. Through practice and patience, you too will be able to make your own homemade crocheted beaded items.

Learn more about this author, Meg A Wright.
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