Ruffled Peyote Stitch – How to

I am sure there are various ways of achieving ruffles or frills with peyote stitch.  This is but one of them.

Ruffled peyote is a very useful addition as it can be used to create texture, structure, interest.

Ruffled Peyote Stitch – Characteristics

The ruffles produced are solid, firm, and strong.  They stand up on their own. Not floppy. Not flimsy.

Tips on Weaving Ruffled Peyote

• Knowing how to do peyote stitch helps!
• Each bead must be pulled taut as you work the ruffles.
• Advisable to use different colours in the ruffles (even if colours are slightly differentiated) because the first 3 rows of the ruffles can get very confusing (hard to distinguish one bead from another).
• Once the ruffled peyote is complete, do not try to bend it.  (I once snapped off the entire ruffle strip: the stitching, as needs be, is so taut that they can break off that way.)
• 3 foundation rows of increases to create the ruffles.  Use beads smaller than main body of work.

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How to Create the Ruffled Peyote

I am using a beaded bezel cab to show this.  I won’t show how to do a beaded bezel here.  I am assuming you already know how to do that.  Please note that you can use the ruffled peyote stitch on any beaded project – not just around a cab.

Here you see the complete but plain beaded bezel cab. No ruffles.

Let’s start creating the ruffled peyote stitch. We will need 3 (foundation) rows to create the ruffles.

Row 1: Insert 2 beads between each “peyote structure”.   (Here the cab was bead bezelled mainly with 11/0 seedbeads.  The ruffled peyote is done with 15/0 size seed beads.) Carry along this way around the cab.

Row 2: In this row, you will be inserting [1 bead – 2 bead] after each bead from previous row.  That means, insert 1 bead after a bead from previous row; then insert 2 beads after next bead from the previous row.  Continue on in this sequence of insertion till the end.

Row 3: In this row, you just insert 1 bead after each bead from previous row.

Once you have completed Row 3 .. you will start to see the peyote structure. That means you can continue adding rows of (standard) peyote stitch till you get the depth you desire.

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Example of Ruffled Peyote Stitch

This is another example of the use of the ruffled peyote stitch: Art Deco Buddha with Ruffled Peyote Stitch (CH0334)