These cute little tropical fish earrings were designed by the lovely Donna from Beach n’ Boho jewellery – check out Donna’s beautiful jewellery over on her Facebook page here Beach n’ Boho
Use Donna’s design or have fun making your own design using our free prinatable graph paper – click here to print your brick stitch graph paper
You’ll need to gather the following supplies:
2 x Earwires
Size 11/0 Miyuki or Toho seed beads
Donna has used the following colours:
11/0 Miyuki Seed Beads in:
Opaque Duracoat Dyed Aqua blue
Opaque Duracoat Dyed Turquoise
Opaque Duracoat Dyed Bright Blue
Size 10 Beading Needle
Fireline Thread (for the brick stitch)
Softer thread such as DuraThread or S-Lon D for the fringe
1. Thread your needle with around 60cm of Fireline Thread
2. This style of earring is worked from the widest point of the brick stitch and works up towards to the top loop of the earrings before adding the fringe later.
3. Begin using ladder stitch – pick up the first two seed beads as shown and stitch back through them so that they sit side by side:
4. Now pick up the next bead in the pattern and stitch back through the previous bead and back through the bead just added – repeat until you have a line of 14 beads. This creates the base to make your brick stitch design.
5. Now pick up the next two beads in the row above and brick stitch them to the base by hooking your needle underneath the thread between the 12th and 13th bead in the base:
6. Now stitch up through the last bead added and down through the first bead in this row before stitching back up again through the last bead added (this makes the bead on the end sit nice and flat)
7. Pick up the next bead in the pattern and hook your needle under the thread that crosses over the top of the beads in the row below, stitch up through the bead just added:
8. Repeat for the other beads in this row.
9. Begin the next row – exit from the last bead added and pick up the next two beads in the row you are beginning and repeat steps 5-8. Each row will be shorter than the one before and you will complete a total of 12 rows of brick stitch.
10. You now have a little triangle made up of 1 row of ladder stitch and 12 rows of brick stitch. We are now going to attach the loop for the top of the earring.
11. Exiting from the last bead added pick up 6 seed beads and stitch down into the other bead in the last row. Strengthen the beads in the loop by stitching through the beads one more time.
12. Now finish off your fireline by stitching between several beads in the outer rim of the design and making several knots. Trim off the excess thread.
13. You’re now ready to switch to a more flexible thread for the fringe (Fireline is a little too stiff for this job and won’t allow your fringe work to move and sway). Attach your new thread to the existing work by stitching between several beads in the first row of ladder stitch and tying several half hitch knots. Exit from one of the end beads.
14. Pick up 19 seed beads (check out the pattern for the correct colour order, miss out the last bead added and stitch back up through the first 18 beads and the bead that you exited from in the base of the design. Stich down through the next bead in the base of the design ready to attach the next row of the fringe.
15. Repeat for the other 6 rows of the fringe – each row will be 2 beads longer than the one before until you reach the middle where you will have 31 beads in the middle two rows. You will then work towards the other side of the design decreasing the number of beads in each row until you reach the last row with just 19 beads
