Beaded Flower Museum

The Beaded Flower Museum
A Virtual Museum of Vintage and Antique Beaded Flowers

About Beaded Flowers

Of all the applications of beadwork, flowers are the most captivating for many of us. It is the three-dimensional flowers that, once they are created look as if nature itself has been frozen in time, that we wish to catalog here. (Jonalee Crabb).

There are three main ways to create these three-dimensional beaded flowers:

French method
English method
Continental method

The French method uses only the technique of stringing in the creation of beaded flowers, stringing beads onto wire before starting, then the flowers are made by using the end of the wire and feeding the beads into the flower and twisting.

The English method is far more complicated and employs several methods, mainly woven or twisted on either wire or thread (though thread will hold its shape only if the weave is tight or a wire frame is involved), embroidered in the same way raised embroidery was done, and some stringing.

Finally, the Continental method uses the ladder stitch predominantly, but also incorporates a lot of design elements most closely resembling a laced stitch or an artistic kind of netted lace.

There is some crossover between the methods, most notably in the simple looping technique, but the distinctions are very clear.