“Retrobellish Beaded Fabric Cuff”

Retrobellish Beaded Fabric Cuff

Published October 18, 2011 | By Diana Romaxx

Recently, I was looking through a fashion magazine and saw several jeweled cuffs that I really liked. Out of curiosity, I thought I’d try to make one of my own. It was a learning experience, because it took a longer time for me to choose the beads than the fabric. I had some interesting black and rustic gold striped fabric and then chose some beads that I thought would look nice against the fabric.

I lined up the beads and moved them around until I chose a pattern that I really liked. Then, instead of individually sewing each bead to the cuff, I decided that for flexibility I’d string about four beads and then tack them down (hand sewing a few stitches at the end through the cuff) before continuing with stringing the next four beads in the pattern I had chosen.

The finished cuff measured approximately 2 inches wide by 10 inches long. For fabric support, I used a 1/8 inch thick interfacing about a ¼ inch smaller than the fabric’s measurements. I wrapped the fabric around the interfacing and hand sewed the fabric with the seam in the back. I also sewed a small piece of solid black fabric over the seam in the back of the cuff to hide the seam and used a small black snap for the cuff’s closure.

Once I completed sewing the beads on the cuff, I felt that the cuff could use a little more embellishment around the edges, so I decided to crochet a small black trim. I used a size 3 crochet thread and size E/4 crochet needle. My simple pattern consisted of 60 chains in the first row. In the second row, I crocheted five chains and single crocheted into the third chain (of the first row). Then I repeated crocheting five chains and single crocheted through the third chain again, creating little loops. I repeated this crochet pattern for the other side of the cuff and then hand sewed both trims onto the cuff. I was really happy with the results.