Tips and Tricks

April 2003

OK, after the talk in this month's thread review article about breaking beads, I thought I’d cover the topic a bit more. Specifically, what do you do when you want to break a bead? We all know that feeling when you are working a piece, and you suddenly realize that five rows back you put in the wrong bead, and it just glares at you every time you look at it.

The most common recommendation I’ve seen suggests very carefully taking a pair of needle-nose pliers and crushing the bead. The problem with this is that no matter how careful you are, the thread is going to be subjected to stress and might even get cut by the sharp edges of the crushed bead. Even when the thread doesn’t break completely, it gets weakened and might break later.

We also all know the feeling of tugging at a stubborn needle, only to find the bead broken because the hole was too small. I suddenly realized one day that by combining these two circumstances, you could solve the problem of how to break a bead without stressing your thread.

I’ve used this hundreds of times, and it always works wonderfully. What I do is take my working needle, and put it halfway through the bead. Then I take a second needle and do the same. You do need to make sure that the needles are big enough that they won’t easily fit through the bead. (I did have this happen one time when there weren’t any bigger needles handy, and I used a third needle.) Anyway, once you get the needles to the point where they stick, gently push on them until the bead breaks. You’ll feel the resistance release when the break occurs.

With most beads, this will either break the bead in half or break a small section out of the bead, and you can tease the other section with the needle until it falls out of your work. Because you are forcing the break from the inside of the bead, your thread is safe.

With thicker walled beads, using a pair of pliers to push the needles through will save your fingers from getting punctured! Oh, and it’s usually a good idea to have the extra needle threaded. I’ve had needles go flying when working with a stubborn bead, and if they’re threaded, they’re easier to find!

Be aware though that when you repair a piece this way, the thread from the previous stitch will be visible on one side of your work. I many projects, this won’t matter because it is on the “inside” of the work, but if you are working a piece that is seen from both sides, you will want to do a true repair and undo the work up to that point. (Or you can do what many of us do – call it a spirit bead and claim you put it there on purpose!)

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