Customer Reviews

Chinese Knots for Beaded Jewellery

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is far superior to any of the others. This is the only book that gives complete instruction. Many of the other books do not want you to know their "trade secrets", so they leave steps out. But, this lady is a true teacher and she gives of all she knows. I began knotting to increase my mental and physical dexterity after an auto accident. Not being able to accomplish something can be very depressing. Susan Millodot takes away all the mystery!

Remember that any beautiful art takes a great deal of time and effort to learn. You must be patient with yourself. And, you must practice one thing at a time. And, practice every day. If you do this, and follow Susan's greatly illustrated directions, you will be achieving better tension and more beautiful knots as time passes. And, you can do it fairly quickly.

My hat goes off to a very encouraging and sharing teacher, person and author! I am so very grateful that she wrote this book and wish I could thank her personally.

This book is a beginner's dream introduction to knotting. Complete with clear, concise step-by-step directions and large color photos of each step, this text is sure to be an enjoyable resource to anyone looking to learn how to achieve beautiful knot work designs on the first try. I personally am applying many of the designs to some hemp work, so the contents are easily modifiable to your own creative ideas. There are "patterns" you can follow but these are secondary and the book focuses on showing you the main techniques so you can apply them however you like in your own works.

First, my qualifications as a "reviewer": I've been making glass and metal beads, along with precious metal jewelry, for a living for over 20 years. In my early beadmaking years I also made fiber and beaded jewelry, and I amassed a collection of over 1000 kinds of beads in all materials, shapes, sizes and hole sizes. So I came to this book with a lot of experience with all kinds of beads, a fair amount of experience with fiber; and none with knotting, knitting, braiding or any of that. I'm doing good to remember how to tie a slip knot! And finishing the ends of a fiber piece in a professional manner has always been a challenge for me. My goal was to learn how to work with larger cords in a way that was *simple*, colorful, elegant, and showcased my own beads.

I think this is a very good beginner's book and I'm happy I bought it. The knots are beautiful, the jewelry - although rather simple in design and color choices - is attractive and shows intelligent color sense, the illustrations and photos are clear. There were times I could not see how she got from Point A to Point B, and an intermediate photo would have been helpful. But by and large, the book will be very helpful in my desire to experiment with elegant fiber jewelry with knots as a design element.

I have not given it 5 stars, however, because I think there are important areas where it falls short:

1.) First, what she says about supplies and how to choose them only fills a total of one page, and is completely inadequate. The author spends 4 times more pages on her personal introduction and the history of knotting than she does on choosing the supplies. One requires very large-holed beads to use most of these techniques, and although she mentions hole sizes in passing, she gives no information about useful or minimum hole diameters, *relative to the sizes of the cords*. She also gives virtually no *specific* information on cord sizes or types, what might be suitable or not. Someone with experience would eventually calculate ratios of hole sizes to cord sizes, at least mentally, and would buy materials with minimum or maximum sizes in mind. But an inexperienced bead or fiber buyer could buy a lot of stuff, learn it was unsuitable, and end up very frustrated.

2.) Second, I wanted to see more of a variety of professional finishing options. A button knot makes a great button, but one loop of smaller cord might be completely undersized or too weak to be used over and over in a closure. There are many fiber finishing techniques for closures, ways of wrapping threads and loops and so forth, and it would have been very useful to have seen them incorporated with the knots. Clasps and closures are the mark of a professional piece; the pieces shown in the book were finished with commercial findings in a "hobbyist" manner. Because this is not my strong suit, I'd hoped to get a few more ideas. I was disappointed.

3.) Finally, any good how-to book should have a few good sources of supply. With this book, listing some of the larger mail order sources for silk and cotton cords would have been useful, as well as sources for larger-holed beads.

Having said all that, this is certainly is a good elementary book, and it will prove useful as a starting place. I recommend it to anyone who wants an introduction to using beads with Chinese knotting.

If you forgot how to do all those macrame knots from your younger years this is a great book to help.

Take a beautiful focal bead, add a cord and instead of just letting it dangle around your neck,this book will teach you how to create Chinese Knots to embellish a cord around your bead and create a work of art. Included are close up step by step pictures in full color to help guide you along the way. It is a very helpful addition to my jewelry making library.

This is THE best basic Chinese knots book I've ever used. The diagrams are very very clear and easy to follow. The author also provides a lot very useful knots tips and how to put together beads and combinations. My 10 year-old girl learned how to make button knot from this book when I tried and failed from other books. This 80 pages simple book has done amazing jobs to show you the very complicated Chinese knots the easy way.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn to make jewelry using Chinese knots. It is an excellent reference. The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is that the instructions for some of the more complicated knots did not provide enough step-by-step guidance. For example, the knotting process might be shown in 2 or 3 pictures where 5 or 6 pictures would have been much better. Some of the knots took me a lot of effort to puzzle out from the pictures provided.

I initially borrowed this book from the library but after reading it I knew I had to have a copy of my own. The instructions are well written and easy to follow. The photos are beautiful as well. I also purchased this author's book on Celtic Knots at the same time. I make hemp jewelry and needed some new inspiration, this book will certainly provide it.

This is an excellent book! I just got it in the mail and I've been reading, the directions and pictures go well together and it's easy to understand. Excellent book! And the pictures are BEAUTIFUL! I can't wait to see what my first necklace turns out like!

Very easy to follow the instructions. This is the type of book I had been looking for. It's absolutely wonderful.

Excellent Book!!
I did a very good choice buying this book; it has excellent projects, they are very well explained. I really like this book.