O My Stars, Part 1; The Building Blocks

These beaded stars resulted from a fusion of origami and geometric Peyote-stitch beadwork

The inspiration for these figures was the origami sculptures of Henk van der Vorst and the techniques described in ‘Folding Techniques for Designers’ by Paul Jackson.

The beadwork engineering, architecture, and design are mine.

This document contains the pattern and tutorial to make a three-dimensional work of fine art. The design and the content of this document are offered at this time gratis, but are still the intellectual property of Joy Davison, and are therefore under copyright protection. Copying, sharing, lending, even partial, is not allowed. Contact me if needed.
Thank you for supporting me by being a fair user.

I want to present this in steps.

• The Hexagonal Parabola
• The Star Assembly in 2 Parts
• The Hub
• Variations

The Hexagonal Parabola …the Wee-Warped Hexagon

I originally modified the warp of this hexagon for use in a specific group of hyperbolic and minimal-surface figures.

Search hyperbolic parabolas and you will most often see curved spans or saddles even when constructed with rigid linear materials. This is easy to see in the photo, below, even with my questionable paper-folding skills.

In peyote-stitch, the typical herringbone-warped surface (shown below in ivory beads) creates a very tight, angular form, making a curve unlikely even with soft tension.

I needed a hexagon that conformed to a cube, had both the warp and curve found in an origami parabola, and straight edges for seaming.

The modified increase progression (beaded in blue) replicates this curve pretty well. The curve is technically shaped and will work with cylinder beads as well as rocaille seed beads. And yes, I gave it a cute name…The Wee-Warped Hexagon…. or WeeWarpie!

When I saw Henk’s assemblies of hexagonal parabolas, I immediately recognized the WWH but he used these building blocks in a different and exciting way…both in final shaping and configuration. So this is where I’d like to begin. Let me introduce the WWH!

Making the WWH

The minimum number of rounds needed for a satisfactory curve in these WWHs seems to be 13, but they can be expanded pretty liberally for making larger O-Stars and other structures by simply adding more herringbone increases to the vertices or corners. I haven’t explored the upper limit, but have taken them to 20 rounds.

I’m using size 11/0 beads, here, but I’ve also made them in sizes 8/0 and 6/0. I’ve made WWHs with cylinder and round beads but it would be fun to see the results of using other bead shapes.

I have not mentioned thread-type. Most people have their personal preferences and can be quite passionate about their choices.

All the WWHs for any of these completed figures will finish with an equal number of rounds.

Experience in Peyote stitch will be helpful for this project. I think anyone can do this, but I will categorize these as an intermediate-level series of tutorials.

These will be worked in Round Peyote, with a step-up at the end of each round.

The photo illustrates 3 basic ways WWHs can be shaped.

I decided to play with a very informal kind of word chart using “0” to represent beads. 0=a single bead, 00=a pair, and 000-a triple. I welcome feedback.

Round 1: Begin with 3 beads weaving through the first bead to form a circle. Leave enough tail to comfortably hold and later weave in.

There is more than one way to start round peyote and all are valid. Follow your heart.

0 0 0

Round 2: Increase. Add 2 beads between each bead in Round 1.

00 00 00

Round 3: Single Peyote. Stitch 1 bead in each of the 6 available spaces, splitting each increase-pair with a single bead.

0 0 0 0 0 0

Round 4: Increase. Stitch 2 beads into each space.

00 00 00 00 00 00

Round 5: Single Peyote. Stitch 1 bead into each space, splitting each increase-pair with a single bead.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Round 6: Single Peyote. Stitch 1 bead into each space.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Round 7: Increase. Pick up 1 bead and stitch into the 1st space. Pick up 3 beads and stitch into the 2nd space. Stitch 1 bead into the 3rd space. Stitch 3 beads into the 4th space and continue this sequence through the round, ending with 3 beads in the 12th space.

Please note that the 3-beads of the increase round lay in a flat line and are not allowed to form a peak. If you need to, pull the outer beads apart to push the center bead down.

0 000 0 000 0 000 0 000 0 000 0 000

Round 8: Increase. Stitch 1 bead in the 1st space. Stitch 2 beads in the 2nd space. these will lay atop the 3-bead increase on Round 7. Stitch 1 bead in the 3rd and 1 bead in the 4th space. Add 2 beads in the 5th space. Continue this sequence through the round, ending with 1 bead in the 18th space.

0 00 0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 00 0

From Round 8, forward, each round will begin with 1 bead in the first space and will have 2-bead herringbone increases at each vertex or corner and single Peyote between.

For the purposes of this basic tutorial, I stitched 12 rounds and will add 1 more, to number 13, during figure assembly.

The O-Star will require 12 WWHs, the hub will require 6, and the number for other figures will vary.

The next post, Part 2, will cover the assembly of the inner half of the star.

Bead Fearlessly!