Fall Season - Lesson 3: Easy Tila Flat Bead Necklace

How to make a necklace with Tila beads?

It's time for episode 3 of the Fall season beginner jewelry training. The goal of this course is to help you get started in creating costume jewelry. Each lesson is linked to an essential jewelry making technique and a project to put it into practice. In addition, each lesson includes a list of materials and tools to buy to equip yourself little by little.

We continue with the first two episodes to offer you another jewelry project with Tila Miyuki beads. The first episode showed you how to make a bracelet with a sliding clasp and the second episode showed you how to make a pendant with wire and beads to turn it into earrings. In the third episode, we will learn how to make an easy necklace with flat rectangular beads. This is a first step towards bead weaving. Nothing complicated though, we tried to find the easiest way to weave Tila beads in order to create a necklace. In this lesson we will also see how to open and close a ring correctly.

1- Easy flat bead necklace

Tila beads from Miyuki brand are normally made to be woven. They come in three different sizes, or rather, three different widths that can be woven into more or less complex weaves. Even if the simplest way is to thread them on two threads as seen in the previous episodes, they allow many more possibilities. Here are some examples of what you can do with Tila. Some of these tutorials are at an advanced level, but this will give you an idea of what you can do:

Miyuki Delicas, Bugles and Half Tila Beaded Creoles Tutorial

Herringbone bracelet with Miyuki Tila beads

Miyuki Delicabeads bangle rocailles and Tila

We also showed you some examples on the episode 1 page. For episode 3, we tried to find the easiest way to show you how to weave tilas. We stuck to one row of standard size tila beads. To attach the beads together, you have to make a kind of loop by going through one bead, then the next and then back through the previous one. The video will be much clearer about this. Nevertheless, here are some points to remember about the basics of bead weaving.

2- Important things to know about bead weaving

• Think about the finish and the clasp before you start weaving: Always imagine how you are going to finish the weaving before you start it, because often the start of the weaving is not the same depending on how you are going to attach the weaving.
• There are several threads for bead weaving that can be used. They must be fine threads to be able to be threaded on a needle and pass several times through the hole of the beads. In the case of our project, you need strong nylon thread, as the thread will be visible on the edges of the necklace and therefore more easily subject to wear and tear against the edge of the beads. Forget your cotton sewing thread, which won't last a day.
• What length of thread should I use? The length of the thread is not indicated in the tutorial you are following? An oversight? No, this is normal. In bead weaving, we talk about the length of the thread arm. This is the length you are comfortable with when weaving. Some weavings require more than 10 meters of thread. Can you imagine pulling your thread endlessly every time you add a bead to your weave? It would get boring very quickly. That's why we usually cut a length of thread about the length of your arm's length, or a little more, but very rarely more than 2 m.
• In a weaving of rocailles or delica, we can wedge the thread by threading it in the pearls and thus avoid making a knot to stop it and take a new thread. In this case, there are not enough beads in the width of our necklace to do this. So we will have to make a double knot by tying our thread on a piece of thread already woven. Then, we'll pass our thread through the bead and cut it. A small dot of glue on the knot will make sure it doesn't come undone.

3- Clasp for Tila necklace

You can glue the Tila in a thick enough lace end, or make a clasp with beads. In this case, we used a small clasp for Tila beads. It is a metal rectangle about the width of a tila with a closed ring, i.e. a welded ring that cannot be opened. This bead is made by another manufacturer than Miyuki. This one has created metal replacement beads, tips and spacers that are specific to some fancy shaped glass beads like tila. The manufacturer calls these accessories Cymbal.

Once the Cymbal end cap has been attached to the beads by the weaving technique, a clasp can be added. To connect the clasp to the end caps, you need to use open rings, which means rings that are not soldered. You need two jewelry pliers to open a ring. Be careful, these rings must not be opened by spreading the ends. This would deform the ring, which could become oval. You must rotate the ends of the ring to keep its round shape. In the same way when you close the ring.