Sizing a seed bead project

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This past weekend, I took my daughter to visit some of her cousins, and I loaded up my beadwork, planning to make some pumpkin earrings for Halloween.

Since I wasn't home and couldn't use my Beader's Canvas software, I took graph paper and a pencil to use for mapping out the pumpkin. After about 20 minutes of marking and shifting so that the pumpkin didn't look lopsided, I finally had a jack-o-lantern face I was happy with.

brick stitch seed beads beading beadwork
Jack-o-lantern sketch for brick stitch.

So I started beading in brick stitch. It didn't take me long to realize I'd need to go back to the drawing board, though, as the pumpkin I'd sketched would wind up being way too wide to wear as earrings. 

In retrospect, I should've known that having 20 beads across would be too wide, even with seed beads, but at the time, the thought never crossed my mind.

That's probably my greatest challenge in working with seed beads — I often over- or underestimate how much space they take up. I realize the size is supposed to indicate how many beads will fit side to side in an inch, but I've found that a size 11 Czech bead is wider than a size 11 Delica, so rather than figure out how many of each style will actually fit in an inch, I've always just winged it. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes it doesn't.

And this past Saturday, it didn't work out so well.

I've decided, though, that rather than double the amount of time I spend sketching a project -- especially as I try to branch out into different projects, I'm going to stop winging it, and maybe one day, I will just know and won't need to figure it out each time. 

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