Ogalala butterfly stitch

When it comes to off-loom bead weaving there are two things I'm especially drawn towards: lacy stitches and ruffles. Ogalala butterfly stitch combine them both: netting with a drastic increase of beads for every row creates flowing ruffles.

In the bracelet above, called Sjögräs (Seaweed), I have used chunky 8/0 japanese seed beads in peridot together with drops in sparkling aqua green-lined aqua. Not a colour combo I use very often, but I liked the feel of it, real bright summer shades. The clasp is a cobalt blue MOP charm.

When the bracelet was finished, I played around with it, rolling it together. Which turned out to be a good thing to do: when rolled together, the ogalala strip turned into a flower. Some time later a new contest was opened at Pärlplatsen, Regntunga skyar (Skies heavy with rain). The theme being to create beadwork in a greyscale. I sighed -- had been working a lot with boring colours lately -- but gathered all my grey beads and findings. That included a UFO, consisting of grey vintage drops, filigree connectors and pewter-grey chain. It had lead a quiet life in the UFO collections since I hit a dead end with the design. Now I stripped away some of the drops and flowers and instead I got the idea to stitch ogalala flowers to the filigrees.

The result was Under en silvermåne, Under a silver moon.


I actually did not get the idea of rolling my netted ruffles into flowers just out of the blue. A couple of years prior, I had made a rose in peyote ruffles for another contest. That contest was dedicated to peyote stitch only so while I didn't like the stitch much, I did enter with my very first finished peyote beadwork. The instructions for making ruffles had I found much earlier at Beadwork.about.com. That time I had soon realised that ruffles made great roses, the same way you roll a ribbon or paper rose. The rose was then stitched to a filigree box clasp. Ideally I wanted to use a sieve clasp, but at the time I couldn't find one so the filigree clasp had to make due.

Gammeldags ros means Old-fashioned rose.