Hey all,
I haven't been able to participate here much lately, so I wanted to at least pop in and share a design idea - I highly doubt I'm the first person to have thought of it, of course, but I love the look of this technique so much that I want to spread it around.
It's just a single spiral, but done with size 8 core beads, and size 1 bugles and size 15 seeds for the outer spiral. You can create quite a few different color coordinations. Just string 1 size 15, 1 bugle, 1 size 15, one bugle, and one more size 15, for the outer spiral. Size
8 core beads will support the length of each row of outer beads.
I have one with blue iris core beads, black bugles, and both matte black and blue iris size 15's. It's really groovy-looking!
The only drag about this technique is that, in order to keep the spiral from going all flat and sloppy, it's necessary to go back and ladder-stitch (or RAW) every outer row to the next. Which is tedious as heck, but it really makes a difference in the finished look.
Just thought someone might like a new (or at least, new to me) way to do spirals. Enjoy!