First of all Happy New Year to everyone reading this blog!
This is my first post this year and a tutorial for the Stepping Stones chain maille weave for an alternate way of doing it for those (few) like me who are math challenged (despite my mom being a math teacher, lol).
I made a Stepping Stones bracelet a few days ago (design by Corvus Chainmaille) based on the free tutorial from Mailleartisans, which is very easy to do. I created the bracelet without a problem - until I wanted to do a pair of earrings with different size large rings which assumed a different number of small connector rings to attach the large ones to - especially when working with 3 ring sizes, as opposed to 2 sizes that the tutorial from Maillerartisans is based upon.
While looking at my bracelet for a little while, I realized that the whole thing is nothing but a 2 in 2 chain with some additions. I deconstructed it in my mind, and hopefully this tutorial will help a few - it is a bit slower going because I did it in 4 different phases, but some steps can be done together once you read through the basics.
So first here is the silver piece I started with, in an overview as to my progress so far. I will also post the bracelet once it's fully woven together. I used here 3 sizes of rings:
- large rings (I used 1.5mm rings with ID of 6, for an AR of 4)
- medium rings (I used 0.9mm rings with ID of 3, making it a 3.28 AR)
- small connector rings (I used 0.7mm rings with 2.5mm id with AR 3.5)
Above you can see the bracelet in different stages of 'being', and some silver rings that I'm using to work through the piece as well.
Step 1 - Create a simple 2 in 1 chain in two ring sizes. Attached to this medium size ring are two small rings (the connector rings). Make the chain longer than a regular bracelet size, since the addition of the big rings will curve your chain and make it shorter.
Step 2 - Double up the medium rings so you end up with a long 2 in 2 chain as shown below. So you have 2 med. rings connected to the two small rings.
Step 3 - Start adding 2 small rings on one side of the medium rings, like shown below. How many of these 2 ring sets you will add will depend on how big your large ring is and how curved you want your piece to be. The original tutorial calls for 4 double-up small rings, I used 6 in this example. So basically the medium rings will have 3 sets of small rings on them - two sets as connectors, and one set lose in the middle (as shown in the image below). Once you have the 6 double rings (or how many you want your large ring to be connected to), when you add the next set of 6 rings, add them to the opposite side of the medium size rings.
While this is quite basic, maybe it's the way my mind works, but this is how I could make sense of it all. I hope it does help someone mathematically challenged like I am :)
This is my first post this year and a tutorial for the Stepping Stones chain maille weave for an alternate way of doing it for those (few) like me who are math challenged (despite my mom being a math teacher, lol).
I made a Stepping Stones bracelet a few days ago (design by Corvus Chainmaille) based on the free tutorial from Mailleartisans, which is very easy to do. I created the bracelet without a problem - until I wanted to do a pair of earrings with different size large rings which assumed a different number of small connector rings to attach the large ones to - especially when working with 3 ring sizes, as opposed to 2 sizes that the tutorial from Maillerartisans is based upon.
While looking at my bracelet for a little while, I realized that the whole thing is nothing but a 2 in 2 chain with some additions. I deconstructed it in my mind, and hopefully this tutorial will help a few - it is a bit slower going because I did it in 4 different phases, but some steps can be done together once you read through the basics.
So first here is the silver piece I started with, in an overview as to my progress so far. I will also post the bracelet once it's fully woven together. I used here 3 sizes of rings:
- large rings (I used 1.5mm rings with ID of 6, for an AR of 4)
- medium rings (I used 0.9mm rings with ID of 3, making it a 3.28 AR)
- small connector rings (I used 0.7mm rings with 2.5mm id with AR 3.5)
Above you can see the bracelet in different stages of 'being', and some silver rings that I'm using to work through the piece as well.
Step 1 - Create a simple 2 in 1 chain in two ring sizes. Attached to this medium size ring are two small rings (the connector rings). Make the chain longer than a regular bracelet size, since the addition of the big rings will curve your chain and make it shorter.
Step 2 - Double up the medium rings so you end up with a long 2 in 2 chain as shown below. So you have 2 med. rings connected to the two small rings.
Step 3 - Start adding 2 small rings on one side of the medium rings, like shown below. How many of these 2 ring sets you will add will depend on how big your large ring is and how curved you want your piece to be. The original tutorial calls for 4 double-up small rings, I used 6 in this example. So basically the medium rings will have 3 sets of small rings on them - two sets as connectors, and one set lose in the middle (as shown in the image below). Once you have the 6 double rings (or how many you want your large ring to be connected to), when you add the next set of 6 rings, add them to the opposite side of the medium size rings.
Step 4 - Now add the large rings. So far I've added two large rings for each 6 sets of small lose connector rings. As I go along, I will keep adding more.
One other reason why I prefer doing it this way is that in case I want to add a different size of large rings or attach it to a different number of small connector rings (e.g. a focal point on a necklace), I can decide right there how many connector rings to add as I progress with the piece and see visually where I am at the moment.
3 comments:
Thank u these pictures make it clearer to me, i may even have a go now. regards Dottie
Really quite rude not to ask me as the inventor of the weave or even mention me on here. It's not very ethical or professional.
Lady Corvus, you must be really confused. If you had carefully read the blog post, you would have seen that I specifically mentioned you as the weave creator. In fact this is exactly what I wrote, to clear up any confusion:
"I made a Stepping Stones bracelet a few days ago (design by Corvus Chainmaille) based on the free tutorial from Mailleartisans"
If this was clear enough, not sure what. In addition, why not also mention that you have some weird beef with me, for god knows what reason at all. You not only blocked me on Facebook, but also deleted my whole account on your site, along with deleting all the many pictures I painstakingly uploaded over the last 3-4 years.
If you want to talk about rude, how about you look in the mirror yourself first, eh?
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