Fabric beads!!

I have been investigating making fabric beads in order to create bracelets for a swap that I have signed up for.  These were really fun to make!! There are a lot of different ideas out there for making fabric beads so I ended up sort of combining several to get what I was looking for.  I used a strip of fabric about 5" long x 1" wide.  I folded in the edges and added a short piece of double sided tape at my starting end so that the bead would hold together when I started rolling it on the skewer.  I rolled up the fabric strip as neatly as I could and at the end folded over the short end and stitched it up to create the bead.  To keep them from falling apart you really need to add some sort of stitching so, while I was at it I decided to use my floss as decoration as well. I wrapped two different colours of floss around the bead all the while adding stitches as I went.  I added stitching to both ends as well to keep those nice and neat.  Once done, they looked a little plain so I decided to stitch on a row of white seed beads as well.  I really like how they worked out.
On hind sight, I chose floss that coordinated with my fabric but I see that the fabric does not show very much now that they are all done.  Using double sided tape on the inside of the bead made stitching it difficult by gumming up the needle.  I may have to stitch the beginning end similarly to how I stitched the finishing end to create a base for the bead and maybe some other kind of glue that would be better for stitching.   I will have to experiment.
So in the end, though I love the look of the beads and I am sure they will make a beautiful bracelet the time commitment to making enough beads to make a bracelet for each of my swap partners is more time than I have!!  Darn!!  So I will be looking for a different project for that swap.  In the mean time, I have decided to make a bracelet for my self with my beads!!

Therese