I love stitch markers. I use them in all my designs. Unique ones to mark the beginning of rounds. Simple ones to mark the difference between body sections in sweaters or between cable repeats on smaller projects like cowls or hats. The little simple kind that aren’t much more than a enlarged jump ring are my favorites.
A while back I received some simple beaded stitch markers (similar to my finished ones here) as a bonus thank you with a yarn order. They were the best! Simple and thin metal like I love, but also the bead made them just different enough to use to mark different types of sections like you sometimes need with multiple cabled panels in a project.
Unfortunately, I also loose stitch markers. (The husband believes that if he were to search the house with a large enough magnet he would find hundreds of them popping out from under and behind and inside of every nook and cranny and piece of furniture in the house. He might be right.) So I quickly lost almost all of the lovely, lovely beaded stitch markers.
Instead of scouring the house for them I tried making my own and found that they are a simple, quick DIY project. Here is a rundown of what worked for me.
First I gathered supplies:
- simple metal stitch markers
- size 6/0 seed beads
- needle nose pliers
- a second set of pliers of some sort (rounded jewelry pliers are nice if you happen to have them on hand but not necessary if you don’t)
- small container to hold the beads and markers
- some sort of superglue (but as you’ll see in Step 5 below I decided to skip it)
Step 1: Use the needle nose pliers to get a firm grip on the stitch marker with the seam visible on top. (These simple markers are just short lengths of metal bent into circles so they each have a seam where the two sides of the metal length meet to form the circle.)
Step 2: Use the rounded jewelry pliers or another pair of needle nose pliers to gently bend the stitch marker open.
Step 3: Slide the seed bead onto the stitch marker and let it fall to the bottom out of your way.
Step 4: Use your pliers to gently bend the stitch marker back closed. Because the seed bead is large enough it won’t easily slip off the stitch marker, you don’t have to close the gap up perfectly. In fact if you pull out a handful of these simple metal ring stitch markers from your project bags (or from under your furniture in a pinch), you’ll likely find several of them came with that gap slightly open and you’ve been using them that way without noticing or caring.
Step 5: This step is optional. At first I put a small dab of superglue on each of the stitch markers at the gap and then slid the bead over the gap to glue into place. I’m happy to report I didn’t glue myself to anything unpleasant during this process (superglue and I don’t always get along). But I did find that the superglue did not always hold the bead in place. And more importantly – I found that I do not need the bead to be held in a specific place on the marker. So I eliminated this step for myself. If you have a better relationship with superglue and/or a reason to want the beads stationary, please keep in mind that you should protect your work surface from glue drips and you’ll need a safe place to sit the beaded markers as they dry.
That’s it! Quick and easy.
