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Dragonfly + heart bead embroidered pendant



I love making quick little pendants from special beads.  When I've got a wonderful bead, cabochon, pendant, or charm that I don't want to overwhelm with beadwork, my go-to technique is a peyote bezel and some back stitched accents, in colors that set off or blend with the focal rather than contrasting too much.  Boring?  Not at all when you've got focals this special!

The dragonfly and the heart were made by Melanie Brooks of Earthenwood Studio.  The stitches and techniques used in this pendant can be found in the free chapter of Every Bead Has a Story.




1. Stitch a peyote bezel around your cabochon using size 11/0 seed beads and ending with size 15/0s to cinch in the bezel top.  Add a couple rows of backstitch around the bezel and cut the foundation fabric, leaving a little edge.




2. Cut a matching piece of backing fabric and use edging brick stitch to attach the fabrics, trapping a ring at the bottom.




3. This is what the back looks like.




4. Add short stacks of size 15/0 beads to each edging bead.




5. The almost-finished pendant.




6. Add a square stitch bail to the top back.




7. Use a jump ring to hang a heart charm from the bottom.




8. The finished pendant, hanging on a black rubber necklace.  


Copyright 2015 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

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Comments

Robbie said…
The square stitch bail is so cool!!! Nice you show us your process...as always, a beautiful job!!
Cyndi L said…
That's my favorite type of bail, Robbie! It makes it so easy to exchange necklace cords :-)
OwlBe said…
Just found you and love your work! Thank you for sharing - being a crazy quilter, I'm always looking for new ways/techniques to fill my CQ Blocks and you definitely inspire me :~)
~OwlBe~
Cyndi L said…
I love crazy quilting too! In fact, that's my focus for the Bead Journal Project this year :-)