Where to Find Free Beadwork Patterns Online

Every once in a while I decide to surf the net and see what beadwork patterns are out there for free. Most of my beadwork is Native American in origin, as are most of my designs. However, even I get curious about what others are doing from time to time or I want to add to the patterns I have. At that time I will surf to see what other beaders are doing. I did this recently and found quite a lot of places offering free beadwork patterns.

Here are my top eight places to find free beadwork patterns:

1. Bead Patterns: This website has 38 pages of free beadwork patterns and there are patterns for just about every type of beadwork you can imagine. Just browsing I saw patterns for earrings, necklaces, bracelets in peyote stitch, loom stitch, and commanche stitch just to name a few. While you do have to put the patterns in a shopping cart, you can choose to print them yourself at no cost. This website is a beader's dream because quite frankly it would take an expert beader at least a few months working every day to complete all the projects. If you pull patterns from here, you will never be bored!

2. Fire Mountain Gems and Beads: This website has a large number of free beading patterns, some of which are really incredible, such as for example, the buffalo head that can be done in peyote stitch. Another one that I really liked was the pattern for the Grey Wolf Barrette which you of course could adapt to other things as well. All in all they have twenty four beadwork designs, plenty to keep the avid beader busy for a long time!

3. Avas Beading Galore: This website has some delightful peyote stitch patterns which are floral in nature, all of them truly lovely. While there are not many patterns on this website, it is well worth taking a look at, particularly if you enjoy making amulet bags, as these patterns would work well for those.

4. Animal Pony Bead Patterns: A really cute beading website geared towards kids. It has all sorts of patterns for making little beaded animals. While the patterns call for using pony beads which are much larger than seed beads, I believe these patterns could very easily be adapted to seed beads and would in fact be absolutely beautiful for necklace and earring sets. In fact I plan on making some myself real soon just to test the patterns out!

5. Aunt Molly's Bead Street: Another wonderful website that has patterns for different kinds of beadwork, although it does appear that most of it is peyote stitch in nature. There are some really beautiful and simple patterns here for the beginner, so if you're just getting started this is a fine place to do so when you are looking to get ideas for what to make next.

6. Polar Beads: This website has two pages of free patterns with everything from peyote stitch, to how to add a fringe, to how to make a beaded barrette. It is well worth checking out, although be careful there are also several for sale patterns and unless you're paying attention you might think that the for sale ones are free. The reason for this is that there is a box saying that to print there is no extra cost, they mean for shipping. So only try to download the ones that have clearly marked prices as being $0.00 in green.

7. Janet's Beadwork Patterns: Janet has some really lovely earring patterns that don't look as though they would take too much time. I also liked that not every pattern was a peyote stitch pattern, while personally this is also one of my favorites, I like learning new stitches and Janet has a few I've never seen before. According to her website some she came up with on her own which I thought was really nice as this is the mark of a true beader. There are also a few loomed patterns here as well.

8. Shayla Myst: Most of these patterns are for peyote stitch designs and are either pagan or fantasy in nature. I really loved Goddess one, and the mermaid one to be quite frank. While there are not all that many patterns here, they are complex enough to keep the intermediate to advanced beader busy for quite some time. Some of the color suggestions are superb as well.

These are only a small selection of beading websites that have free patterns from the internet, there are hundreds of others. I found page after page of them, but these were some of the ones that I thought were the best.

Warning: One thing to be aware of is that many of these patterns are copyrighted and you may need to get the author's permission before selling any pieces that include their patterns. Also when copyrighted you may not mass produce or give away copies of the copy you download on the internet in some cases.