To much of my surprise and delight, 14mm rhinestones (rivolis and chatons) are really the magic size for inlaid hexagonal peyote. I shall explain.
The formula for regular (round) beaded bezels is 2.5x, x being the diameter of the rhinestone. The result is how many 11/0 Delica seed beads you start off with—if the result is odd, we choose the next even number. For the 14mm stones, the end result is 35, but we round up to 36.
Now, 36 is really a neat number. It's a multiple of two, three, four, six, nine, twelve, and eighteen. After we finish with the regular bezel we have a chance to embellish the edge. Peyote works so that there is half of the original number to bead on per row, so that is 18 beads to sew on the edge.
If we mark each third stitch with a different color, and use a slower increase than the traditional herringbone increase, we get a flat, slightly curving inlaid hexagonal icon that we can use for anything really. In my case, I'm doing this for this year's Battle of the Beadsmith. As the photo shows, I have so much more to go.
#peyote #peyotestitch #beading #ideasandthoughts #motivational
