Colorful Quilt Square Stitch Bead Earrings

I love how handmade quilts mix color, pattern, and a sense of comfort. These earrings are a simple take on that idea — like a little patchwork quilt you can wear.

They're made with Toho size 11 round beads using square stitch (here’s a square stitch tutorial). The design is straightforward, but the inspiration comes from something timeless and full of personality.

If it looks like a blind person chose the colors — that’s because one did. I closed my eyes and randomly picked 12 tubes. One turned out to be the wrong size, and another got dropped. These are the 10 I ended up using:

• metallic iris brown (11-83)
• opaque terra cotta (11-46)
• transparent frost cobalt (11-8)
• opaque frost pine green (11-47HF)
• opaque luster pale mauve (11-127)
• opaque rainbow white (11-401)
• opaque sour apple (11-44)
• Ceylon innocent pink (11-145)
• opaque luster pumpkin (11-129)
• opaque turquoise (11-55)

Toho round beads are great for square stitch — their uniform size and shape let them stack neatly, while still keeping a bit of that organic, handmade feel. It’s a lot like how a patchwork quilt comes together: precise, but with personality.

The other materials used are a size 12 tulip beading needle and KO beading thread in beige.

Why a blind pick of colors?

I picked the colors aat random simple because it saved me from agonizing over  more than 150 tubes trying to find the “perfect” color combo. With a small, random selection that were appropriate for the project, I had just enough to move forward with what was in my head. My choices within those colors were still spontaneous, and the whole process was faster and easier — which was the goal. And hey, it even led to some color combinations that I would not have tried otherwise. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Colorful Quilt Square Stitch Bead Earring Pattern

Here's what the pattern looks like when I added it to BeadTool beading software. Note that the earrings don't layout exactly the same as the picture above because they turned over when I was adding them to the tool.

If I had drawn this beading design out in beading software first, would I have done things differently? Of course I would have! But I probably would have agonized so much that I wouldn't have made progress for days.

In any event, one thing I noticed right away while drawing it out,was that it would be less busy if I eliminated the dots in the center of each square. 

This is the revised design which I find much more pleasing. I'm still deciding if it is worth stitching up to see the difference. Perhaps I should make some other changes to layout the colors in a more pleasing way. At the very least, my gut was telling me I don't like the pink and blue beaded loops that the earrings hang from.

So, I changed the bead loops to black. Visually, it feels more balanced — like swapping mismatched picture frames so they don’t clash. Before, it was like having one gold frame and one silver side by side; it drew attention in the wrong way.

When there's time, these will get made again using delica beads to get a comparison of how they look in square stitch.

Other articles you might find interesting:

• Comparing Delica Bead vs. Czech Bead Loomed Bracelets
• Beading Software Comparison: BeadTool vs. Beadographer
• Square Stitch Beading Tutorial
• Tools and Materials to Get Started Beading
• Butterfly Beadwork Pattern for Loom or Sqaure Stitch