Bracelet of the Day: Canterbury - Stone Blue

CANTERBURY BRACELET

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Antique Silver-Nickel" (11-464A)
• 6mm fire polished beads "Stone Blue Luster"
• 4mm fire polished beads "Lumi Coated Blue"

I made this bracelet ages ago but it needed to be re-made because it was too tight and I did a crummy job attaching the clasp when I originally made it. Here's how it looked before remaking it:

I think you can see how tight the centers of the motifs are, if you click to view the full size photo, and the ugly clasp loops are obvious. The funny thing is that despite using exactly the same beads, and the same size clasp but in a brighter silver, this time it came out slightly too loose. The reason it was so small before is because I'd pulled the stitching much too tight. I've very pleased with the way it came out this time and I think it's my best Canterbury bracelet to date. The netting is nice and smooth and isn't curling or flopping around like it's prone to do with this pattern.

This was always my favorite color combination of this bracelet and I'm very glad that it turned out so well. I also remade the brown one the other day that I posted about on April 5th. That one had turned out well the first time I made it except that it was much too big on me. This time I used a smaller clasp. Oddly enough, the brown one is slightly snug on me this time even though it has exactly the same number of motifs as before and has the same number of beads and the same clasp as the blue one. Although it's not obvious, I must have pulled my stitching a little tighter on the brown one or maybe the bronze seed beads are slightly smaller than the silver ones. I could tell a difference in the seed beads while working with them. The silver ones seemed fatter and rounder and they fit around the other beads a little differently than the bronze seed beads did with the brown one. 

Here are photos of the new brown Canterbury:

In case you haven't noticed, I make my clasp loops different than Nancy Peterson's pattern suggests. I also add them at a different stage of the process, or at least I did that when remaking these two this time. I added the clasps after adding the netting on both sides and after I'd reinforced it once. After the clasps were added, I reinforced the netting two more times. That really makes a difference in how neat it turns out. Using FireLine is also very important with this pattern and Nancy does call for it. You can buy the pattern HERE. UPDATE 3/9/2021: Nancy is no longer selling her beading patterns but she has graciously allowed me to post her "Canterbury Bracelet" pattern on my blog as a free download. To download a copy, please visit THIS post.