The Art of Freeform

by Frances Whited (freckafree)

From the time I was old enough to put crayon to paper, I’ve had a creative impulse. As soon as I could handle a needle, my mom taught to sew, and I made elaborate wardrobes for my troll dolls, ornamenting their attire with beads and lace and sequins plundered from Mom’s sewing cabinet.

A Cub Scout den mother, Mom introduced me to the bead loom. (In that era, anything Native American was designated as a guy thing. It was OK for Cub Scouts to use a bead loom.)

The bead loom is how I fell in love with seed beads. As a 10-year-old, I could make really cool hippy-chick beaded chokers. I never liked the constraints of the loom, though. The nature of weaving meant that I was restricted to angular designs —think of drawing a picture by filling in squares on graph paper.

Fast forward many years later. I had been dabbling in every art form you can imagine, when I saw an ad for a class in Freeform Peyote Stitch, which is a form of off-loom beadweaving. Obviously, it is not done on a loom; instead, the beads are woven to each other with needle and thread, one minuscule seed bead at a time.

I was riveted by the photo in the ad, which was of a freeform necklace, with curves and colors and random embellishments. I took the class. It was bead weaving gone wild. I loved it, and I knew I had found my medium at last. I loved the freeform aspect of it. No pattern to follow, no counting, and, best of all, no mistakes! In freeform, there may be unanticipated outcomes, but never a mistake.

Last year, I took my seed bead obsession in a new direction: freeform bead embroidery, in which beads are stitched to a backing fabric, one minuscule seed bead at a time.

One bead at a time, and a design decision with every bead. Other than picking out a palette of colors to work with and deciding what type of piece (e.g., bracelet or earrings) I’m going to make, I really don’t know what’s going to emerge when I start. But I employ the principles every designer does – balance, repetition, unity, harmony, variety, emphasis.

Some people find the very idea of freeform paralyzing. “How do I start? How do I finish? How do I even know if I am finished?” And it is a little intimidating at first. You can’t lay out your components and play with a design before you start. You have to jump in and let things happen. You’ll soon learn that, if something isn’t going the way you thought it would, it’s easier to rework your expectations rather than the beadwork. In beadweaving and bead embroidery, backing up is hard to do.

When people watch me work at art shows, the comment I hear most often is, “How tedious!” My response is “One person’s tedium in another person’s relaxation.” It’s the freeform that frees and relaxes me. When I am in the Bead Zone, I zen out – and the design emerges, one miniscule seed bead at a time.