Karen Williams
A self-publishing author who specializes in a
bead weaving style of freeform peyote.
For those of you who have not yet met Karen, or her work, we
wanted to introduce you to an accomplished seed beader who
specializes in a bead weaving form called Freeform Peyote.
if she enjoyed
one over the
other? She
said, “I enjoy
Karen has been beading since she was a girl, but didn’t start
creating jewfreeform peyote until 2003. “For many years, I used beads simelry because
ply to embellish my fabric creations.” She started as a girl with
the finished
stitch kits, stump work, crewel and other freeform styles like
object is both
crazy quilting. She says that in college she “fell in love with cos- beautiful and
tuming.” It was a time in Karen’s life when she was focused on
useful, which
art quilting, costuming, surface designs on fabrics and what she is very appealcalls thread painting (free-motion stitching using my sewing
ing. But sculpmachine).
tural pieces
allow me a
Her introduction to bead weaving came from her mother-in
greater delaw, Caroline who taught basic beading classes. Karen says, “I
gree of freedom in design. They
learned simple peyote stitch from one of her class kits. She let
elry, with more room to develop
me raid her stash for my projects and I happily blame her for
to be immediately useful.”
my beading addiction.” Karen told me that Caroline “specialized
in three-dimensional designs that were very sculptural, very
So when I asked her what gets h
literal, such as a life-size beaded lizard I still covet.”
said, “In designing a piece, I alwa
- whether its a color combination
But in 2003, someone in a class introduced her to freeform.
a gorgeous focal bead, or a foun
Karen says this classmate from “a wearable arts study group
into a piece. I'm a storyteller at h
brought her freeform peyote collar to a meeting. I still remem- prominent in my development o
ber Eve's collar was one of the most heavily beaded objects I'd will help dictate what form the p
ever seen. Done in dark blues with opal accents it was simply
than that I truly can't say that I h
stunning, with its organic, asymmetric design. I immediately
enjoying moving more into sculp
knew that I needed to learn freeform peyote.” But her friend
myself stories about the piece. W
Eve moved across the country in less than a week, and so Karen why, or the story of its inspiration
set off to teach herself. She knew the basic stitch and so she
ing, “I love color, texture and det
jumped in. She calls this her “experimental stage.”
bead weaving is that seed beads
http://www.
Karen creates both jewelry and sculptural pieces. So I asked her
When I asked Karen about what