How I Fell in Love With French Beading

French Beading, an ancient artistic practice, involves simply weaving beads and wire together, but not always simply. The resulting components can be attached to each other to create a sizable piece of artistic beadwork. There are so many stories about the origin of this practice that none of them seem to stand out more than others. Some speculate that the practice began developing in the early 1300’s in Europe. It’s best to Google for answers and form your own opinion. Regardless, it is a phenomenal feeling to French bead with different techniques to create shapes, combine those shapes into components, and shape all of them into something 3-dimensional. In 2023, I stumbled onto a Facebook group called “Learn How to Make French Beaded Flowers”. I was fascinated by what I saw there! I joined and soon participated in free monthly projects offered by several instructors, Lauren Harpster @beadandblossomstudio & Fen Li @beadflora, both superb designers, teachers, and administrators of the Group. I drew on my existing supplies of wire and beads and purchased embroidery floss and floral tape which are used mostly to cover the stems of components. After learning many basic techniques and experimenting with my own color assignments, I was off and running with this new skill. I purchased numerous patterns in support of the instructors and have often used variations from those floral designs in new pieces that I create. The freedom of expression in French Beading feels limitless. After several years, I have created a number of floral sculptures of my own design. I love looking forward to planning an artistically French beaded piece and watching it unfold in ways that are better than I expected.