Description
French Beading Wheat
I find that all my French beading projects benefit from some ‘filler’ flowers to arrange around the main feature flowers. So, I am always keen to develop patterns for projects that will serve this purpose. So, that is what I had in mind when I created my French beading wheat pattern.
It evolved after seeing a field of wheat sprinkled with poppies. The bright red flowers really stood out against the background of wheat. I thought this would make a brilliant arrangement.
Techniques
You are going to be using a very basic French beading technique for this project – the four row crossover. The tricky part when making the ears of wheat is incorporating the single strands of wire that give the wheat its character. You also need to take care as you arrange your rows of crossovers. Make sure that they really resemble an ear of wheat.
Unfortunately this isn’t something that I can teach as a technique. So, you may find it helpful to observe some real ears of wheat (search for online photos). Or just do what looks good to you.
When I am designing French beading projects my personal focus is on creating something that looks (I hope!) like the flower. I am not necessarily recreating something that is botanically correct. There is a good reason for this. Sometimes Nature includes elements, perhaps colouring, or perhaps something that is simply too fine, that are impossible to really recreate with French beading techniques. It is not always practical to include every tiny stamen, pistil and so on. So, I prefer to focus on the ‘big picture’.
If you like, it can be akin to reducing the natural flower to its cartoon version and then trying to imitate that. This makes for French beading patterns that are simple to follow.
The French beading wheat pattern is achievable whatever your level. Your ability to arrange the elements is more important than your technical prowess for this project. If you want the poppies to arrange with your wheat, you can find the pattern below.
Materials
You will need size 11 Matsuno seed beads, 28ga wire and yellow embroidery silk for your beaded wheat. I sell all of these – and more – in the beading supplies department.
