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Hi. This is Julie at Beadaholique.com. I'm going to show you how to do a
European 4-in-1 chain maille.
Here's the bracelet we're going to be doing today.
You can see I've actually added some decorative little stardust sparkle silver plated
beads to add a little bit
of a decorative element to it.
Before we begin this bracelet I want to show you a couple of other examples
of european 4-in-1.
All of these are the same exact stitch just done with the different gauge
jump ring
and also a different color. So it shows you've got a variety of what you
can do with the european 4-in-1. You can make it as wide or as thin as you
like.
But for this video here we're going to be making this brass one right here.
Artistic wire puts out these books Basics of Chain Maille a and Advanced Chain Maille.
They have great
instructions on how to do various weaves
with pictures that show you exactly what to do.
These can be very handy and they're coordinated too to the artistic wire chain maille jump
rings which are the jump rings we're gonna be using.
You can see on the back of these jump rings they have some weaves for you to
choose from.
Before we begin I want to go ahead and show you how to read the package. For this
particular project we're going to be using a brass jump ring.
If you're just starting out with chain maille
I do suggest you start with a less expensive
metal such as brass instead of sterling silver
just until you get the hang of it.
I'm going
to start with a twenty gauge jump ring. It's a little bit easier than
eighteen gauge just for the opening and closing in the workability.
You'll be a little bit happier with how it goes to begin with until you get used to it.
You'll notice on the package that it says ID 9/64 of an inch. ID
stands for inner diameter. That is the diameter of the interior space of the jump ring
which is 3.75 millimeters and there's a hundred forty
pieces in this bag.
When your doing
chain maille you're gonna see the term aspect ratio come up quite a bit. Aspect ratio
is a ratio which you can get to by taking the
inner diameter of the ring
and dividing it by the wire diameter. If you go to the Beadaholique.com website and
you look under techniques and guides there's actually a wire gauge chart which shows
wire diameter.
That's important because when you're getting into more complicated weaves
it's going to ask you for specific wire diameters to let you know if you can
actually do a particularly weave with a particular jump ring.
Sometimes a jump ring can actually just be too tiny to
link all the different rings together that you need.
So if you flip over an Artistic Wire jump ring pack you're gonna see it eight
different weaves on all the packages.
This is really handy because they actually tell you which
jump ring you're gonna need. You'll notice that the byzantine here says
if you're doing a twenty gauge
you need 7/64 of an inch, if you're doing eighteen gauge you need
9/64 of an inch.
Then more importantly as well if you're actually going to do a weave that
has multiple size jump rings
it actually going to give you both of the jump rings you're going to need. So it's really handy. It
take some of the guess work out of it for you.
So you're gonna wanna gather your
jump rings. It's going to take packs to do this particular project which has a two
hundred and twenty jump rings.
You're going to need some tools.
You're going to need several pairs of pliers.
You're going to want to find which ones you're most comfortable with. I have a couple pairs of
chain nose pliers here. I also have a pair of bent nose pliers.
Whatever is most comfortable for you for opening jump rings
and holding on to them.
epperson I personally like to use a
pair of
chain nose pliers
when i work. So that's what I'm going to be using here.
I've actually gone ahead and I've opened up a bunch of
jump rings and I also closed some jump rings as well.
When you get you jump rings in the package itself
they're gonna look like this.
It's really hard to tell but they're just slightly open. They're not totally
open and they're not totally closed. So you're going to want to either open them fully
or close some completely.
You're also going to need a pair of tweezer. These are not necessary. I just find it
helpful to have them.
I'm also going to recommend that you have a spare piece of scrap wire.
I'll show you what to do with that in just a moment.
So let's begin and what you're going to want to do is you take one
open jump ring
link onto it
four closed ones.
I looked at my pattern ahead of time and I saw that I was going to need
approximately two-thirds of my jump rings to be closed
and about one third to be open.
So I went ahead and I did that ahead of time.
So after you've linked four
closed jump rings onto an open one
go ahead and close the jump ring.
Now what I want to do is I want to lay this down flat. Here's where your
tweezers are going to come in handy.
When making chain mail it's really important that the orientation of how the links are
lined up this proper.
So I don't want
this link to be kinked like that. I want this laying flat.
You see how the front ones are actually overlapping the back
ones.
For the european 4-in-1 it's important that you keep that
in that orientation. So again you don't want it going
like that
you want it laying
so that they're overlapping.
So once I got that laid out
I'm going to take another
open jump ring
and link onto it two more closed jump rings.
I'm going to go under that bottom right one
and under the top right one
making sure I'm keeping them in the same orientation that they were in.
Now I'm going to close that jump ring.
Now I want to lay this back out agin and make sure that
all of mine is straight.
You won't need to work on the mat
for a huge length of time. It just helps when you're first starting.
Once you get this going you're gonna be able to forgo the mat and you'll be able to hold it in
your fingers.
So again notice
how the front ones
are overlapping
and resting on top of
the ones behind them.
I'm going to do the same thing again. Take an open jump ring.
Link on two closed jump rings.
Now that I've got these
on my open ring
I'm going to very carefully
lift up
my stitching holding it in place. I've pressed it down on with my fingers so it doesn't
go anywhere.
Go under that bottom one
on the right
then under the top right one
pull it through and
close that jump ring.
What I want to do at this point, you can see that I have my two original ones
hanging there.
I'm going to take that piece of wire
scrap wire and I'm going to thread it
through those two
and take it around and kink it.
I'm just going to twist it a little.
Basically this is going to be discarded later but it's just holding your
place. Letting you know if I was to drop this right now
it would let me know where I started and where I ended.
So kind of good to have that.
So now we're at the point where we can just hold
our chain maille in our hand
and so we're just gonna keep repeating the process of picking up an open
jump ring linking onto it two closed jump rings
and then you can go under.
You can work from either side. If it's easier for you to start with the top right one
go under it and then under the bottom right one or do what we were doing
before where you go
under the
bottom right one and then under the top right one.
Because of how they're laid out it's not going to manner.
You wanna keep double checking when you
have this that you've got
the top ones
laying on top of the ones behind. That's what you want to keep having going on.
So this is what we've got so far.
Now what you're going to do is go ahead and continue with that
exact same step
until you get to the desired length of the bracelet.
We've got our length now completed of our first row of our European 4-in-1.
I actually just measured this against my wrist
to see if it was a length that I wanted.
You can use a ruler as well.
Seven and a half to eight inches is a standard size for a bracelet.
So I'm going to lay it back down
on my beading mat.
To begin our second row go ahead and take off that
wire at the end.
Don't throw it away you're gonna go ahead and use it again
in a few minutes.
Make sure
all your jump rings are facing in the right direction.
I'm going to pick up
an open jump ring.
We're going to link to it to two closed jump rings.
We're going to take this
and we are gonna go
under
the first one
and under the second one
pull it through
take another pairs of pliers
and close your jump ring.
Pick up
another opened jump ring and this time we're only going to link onto it one
closed jump ring.
Link this through
that second jump ring
which we linked onto that open jump ring before
and pull it
through so that's fully linked under.
Now the second
closed jump ring in your
top row,
the bottom of your top row,
link under that
and also
third jump ring.
It can be a little tricky
making sure that your looking at the right
jump rings
and close that jump ring.
I can pick this up at this point.
You can see I'm creating
that second row.
It is always easier once you can actually pick your chain maille.
But sometimes you have to work with on the mat to begin with.
So we're gonna pick up an open jump ring
linked to it
a closed jump ring
go through
that hoop on your very bottom row
up through
the two adjacent
jump rings above it.
We're going to close
that jump ring.
Again pick up an open jump ring
link to it a closed jump ring
where you have that ring which is just kinda hanging there
go ahead
put the jump ring through it
go under
the jump ring
in the row above it
and pull through
and then you want to also go under
the jump ring next to it
and close that jump ring.
So I'll show you how this is looking at this point.
You can see your creating that second row.
What I'd like to do too is I like to go back and put my wire
through my end.
It's a little easier to tell on this one where you started and where you stopped. It's kind of
nice to be able to mark it.
So your going to continue
all the way along the length of your bracelet until you get the other end.
After you've completed your second row of chain maille
take a clasp. I've chosen a tube clasp.
They're actually very handy for chain maille just because of how they have
multiple rings on the side.
We're going to attach one to each end.
So the way were you do this is we're going to identify
you've got three jump rings on the edge and I want to take the two outer ones. So
I'm not going to worry about that middle one.
I'm going to take
the outer one and I'm going to open that back up.
Be careful of the orientation of the jump ring on how it's kinked
when you put your clasp on.
So you don't want to put the clasp for instance this way you want to make sure
you put it on like such.
Close that jump ring back up.
I'm going to do that
to the other jump ring
on the end.
Close the jump ring.
Remember the way that this clasp works. So it's gonna be
this part here
fitting into there. So when you take this side of the clasp. You you put it over here.
You wanna make sure it's all lined up properly.
Now we're going to attach it
to those two exterior jump rings, not the middle one.
So we have our bracelet complete and you have a choice right now. For the
particular pattern I've chosen
I want to add these decorative
stardust embellishments
or you can just leave the bracelet like this. It's totally up to you.
So we're going to add our decorative embellishment to the middle row.
The way we're gonna do this
is we're going to take
our chain maille
and we are going to pick
the jump ring that we want to put
the bead on.
We're going to find the opening to that jump ring.
Open the jump ring
being very very very careful to not to let go and not drop this.
Go ahead and slide
that bead on there
close the jump ring back up
and now you have
a bead
on your chain maille.
So you can do it at even intervals. You can get them all on one side. However you wanna
do it.
So I'm going to skip a jump ring and I'm going to do it on the next one.
So go ahead and continue to add beads for the length of your bracelet or
however you wish to arrange them.
Here is your complete European 4-in-1 chain maille bracelet
with decorative embellishments on it.
Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supplies needs!