Free Beading Pattern

Eventually you might want to branch out into using real patterns without going to the expense of buying a bunch of beading books. Here are some sources for good, free beading patterns.

All About Beading

You would expect a site called All About Beading to have a lot of information about many different kinds of beading projects, and you’d be right. From knitting and crocheting with beads to netting, stringing, even working with pony beads, this site has it all. There are many links to outside sites and some links lead to surprise PDFs, but the site seems to be well maintained. There may be a few dead links, but these are easily forgotten as you become inspired by the interesting free patterns.

Beadage

A great basic site for learning how to bead jewelry is Beadage. This site has instructions for basic necklaces and earrings, as well as hemp jewelry, wire-worked jewelry and more. Check out the gallery for inspiration. Though these pieces don’t come with instructions, they have notes which explain what kind of thread or wire was used and a good description of the piece so you can make one similar.

Free Beading Pattern at Fire Mountain

Yes, Fire Mountain Gems is out to sell you something. The company’s patterns section shows off its beads beautifully, in the hopes that you will buy all the supplies to make yourself a piece just like the ones shown. But it’s still a great site for tips, techniques, patterns and projects, from dream catcher earrings to beautiful beaded animals.

Bead Patterns

If you’re just looking around to see what kind of beading patterns are out there, check out bead-patterns.com. This link points you to the free section of the site, where there are nearly 300 patterns, including necklaces, weaving information and patterns, stitch tutorials, rings, fringe and more. This is a great site for letting you know just what can be done with beads. There’s also an extensive shop where you can buy patterns.

Bead Shak

If you’re new to loom-style patterns, check out the free patterns at Bead Shak. These patterns for banners, key chains and magnets are cute and good instructions can be found with the patterns or other places on the site. This is a good place to start if you want to do weaving work but don’t know where to start.

Rings & Things

For all sorts of easy projects, check out Rings & Things. This site has a good collection of jewelry, wine glass charms, beaded projects, wire projects, macramé, crystal angels and more. Instructions are detailed and well illustrated.

Bead Stringing Projects

A good, but small, collection of patterns is available from Patrice. These patterns are broken down into necklaces, bracelets, rosary beads and patterns for beginners, but all of them have really detailed instructions so if you have any beading experience you should be able to make anything on this site.

Aunt Molly’s Bead Street

If you’re into loom work, peyote or brick work, this is a great little site. There are no instructions, just colored charts, so if you don’t know how to do a certain stitch you will need to look elsewhere for tutorials.

Free Beading Pattern at All Crafts

Scroll down on the All Crafts Jewelry page and you will find links to a good collection of projects. Many of these are for home décor projects or holiday inspired designs. There are some missing links here, but the ones that are still live are worth the effort.

New Kingdom

This site has a collection of Egyptian, tarot and Sept. 11 bead quilt patterns (including a kind of disturbing one of the World Trade Center on fire). These mostly use peyote, square and brick stitch beading.

CJ Bead Pattern Links

CJ Bead Patterns is loaded with off site links to free beading patterns.