Vintage Inspired Three Petal Flower Bead Necklace

Inspiration for a creating a bright flowery necklace was plentiful yesterday as I sat next to my sunny open window enjoying the fresh spring air, testing out a few design configurations I had imagined. In my Wednesday post I mentioned the lack of jewelry that uses the three petal glass flower beads and as I played around with bunching them in threes I  began to recall images of vintage jewelry I have seen on our antiquing trips.  This is the result of that inspiration.

This is a wonderful necklace that is deceivingly simple to make.

Begin by cutting a length of antique brass chain to your desired necklace length. Then a 2-3 yard length of c-lon beading thread. Start the beadweaving on the toggle end by stitching a 12 bead wide by 4 bead tall peyote rectangle with the following pattern.

If you are unfamiliar with how to create a peyote toggle then please join us next week on our new blog site where we will kick off our month long celebration of the seed bead with instructions on creating a peyote toggle.
Weave in the tail thread (but do no cut it off) and stitch up the toggle. Then weave in six beads toward the  center and pick up six green seed beads and pass through the first link in the chain. At this point the trick is to insure that the chain stays facing the same way as you weave in and out of it. Here I started with a couple of loops that are 11 beads long and spaced 8 chain links apart.

The next step is adding the daisies. Pick up 5 green and 6 orange beads then pass through the orange beads in the direction they were strung being very careful to pull everything up to the chain as you do this step. Pass through the first 2 orange beads once more. 

Then you can pick up a yellow bead for the center and pass through the two beads opposite the two you are exiting in the same direction.

   Pick up five more beads and pass through the ninth chain link down from the link where this length of beads exits.

Repeat this step about half way down the chain until you get to the point where you will want to add your first 3 flower dangle. For you first dangle you will pick up 7 green beads, 1 leaf bead, 4 orange beads. Again, tension is important as you pass through the 4 orange beads in the direction they were strung plus one.

Now you can add the three petal flower beads by picking up 1 bead cap, 1 flower bead, and 1 yellow bead. Then pass back up through the flower and bead cap and the next orange seed bead, skipping the yellow bead.

Add the next two flowers in the same way before passing back up through the leaf and one green seed bead. pick up 3 green beads and pass through the fifth chain link from the last link you exited. You want all three dangles to fall on the same side of the chain so you will add a daisy chain length between each dangle to return to the same side. On the center dangle only pick up three green beads on each side and only skip one chain link and on the third dangle pick up the three and six green beads in the opposite order from the first so that the necklace drapes correctly.

Weave up the second half of the chain the same way you did the first omitting the daisies on the last two loops. It is okay if you have to fudge the number of chain links between these last two loops. No one is counting. Once you have passed through the last link in the chain pick up 16 green beads and pass through the last green bead from the last loop and that last link of chain to form the lasso for the toggle. Pass through the lasso 2-3 times to secure it before weaving back down through those last two loops to tie off your thread.
Now, remember the tail thread you left on the toggle at the beginning?  This was left so that you could go back and pass through where the toggle and the stringing meet a couple of times to secure this connection before tying off this thread.

Fin

These are quick instructions intended for beaders who know peyote and daisy chain stitch. If you are still new to beading and would like to create this necklace, please ask any questions below and continue to follow us next month as we celebrated seed beads at our new blog home with new component tutorials each week.

Thanks for reading!