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Hi this is Megan with Beadaholique.com and I'm going to show you how to do a basic
four strand round braid
using flat faux suede cord
so this does take up quite a bit of the cord
You are going to want to have some extra length
for what you want to do
you might need to experiment
and see
how much length you loose
to find out how much you will need
What you're going to do is take
four pieces of flat
cord. I have
this micro faux
ultra suede
and
tied them together in a overhand knot. I'm using four colors just so that you
can keep track of which strand is which
you can use
all one color like I did in this braid here
or you can please just two colors. It's up to you
you're gonna need a
way to secure your
cord to your work surface
you can
use a safety pin
and put it on the
leg of your pants like you do for your friendship bracelets. You can
keep the ends looped if you're using one or two colors and put it on a hook
I'm going to tape it to my table
this braid is pretty simple
separate the strands
okay now you're going to take the leftmost break
and you're going to bring it
around
the middle two
and then through the center of them
and then you're going to take
the right most braid
and bring it
around the middle two
then through the center of them
and when you're going to bring these around since you want to create a round
braid and not a flat braid
make sure that you
actually wrap the flat part around
and create that tube like shape
and those are the only two steps so you just going to repeat. You're going to take the
leftmost strand
and bring it
over
one shy of the end
wrap it around so you get a nice shape on that
bring it back between those two and pull tight
I'm going to move this to the edge more so you can get a better angle
then you take the right piece
bring it back
around the middle two
and then between them
pull them tight
the first length is going to look kind of wonky so
you'll go ahead and cut that off later. Don't worry about it
take your leftmost piece
bring it
around the middle
then between them
you can start to see it's kind of
looking the way that it's suppose to look
rightmost piece
over
the middle two and then between them
make sure you're getting that
twisted around so that it
it should go in a total spiral, every piece. Two should go this way, two should go this way
left piece
back behind the middle two
over
right piece
behind it
over
and if you forget which side you're on
you're just going to start with the one that slightly above
so you can see that the left piece
is raised a little bit higher than the rest of the braid right now. The rest of
these strands
that's what we're going to work with
and make sure that your strengths don't get twisted the wrong way as you're working
or else it'll show twists outside on the outside of the braid
just going to do a little bit more of this so you can
get a handle on what it looks like
just keep going
over two and then back one
left piece
over two and back one
and it does look nicest when it's pulled
tight
so you can see
it gives us this nice
round braid
and to finish this you can either just knot the ends
you can loosen your first knot. If you're
top part is messy you can go down far enough
and do a new knot
you can do overhand knots to tie it off
or if u want to put it into a cord end
like i did here
if your cord end is solid
like if you're using for example a kumihimo finding and it's a solid finding, you
can take some
clear tape
and
put it around the braid and then snip it with scissors and glue it in
for these ones here how you can see to the end
actually I just tied off
really tightly with some nylon beading thread and then clipped right above
so that you can't see it
but be careful and always secure around the braid before you cut the end
off or else it will unravel and it will get really messy
That
is how you do
a Four Strand Round Braid