Bicone Beads: Bead a Beaded Bicone Bead Using Flat Round Peyote Stitch

I was trying to design a cone shaped sea shell and came up with these beaded beads instead. Apparently I've forgotten most of what I learned in geometry class because I was surprised to find that you don't get a cone when you roll up a triangle! Finally I figured out that what I was missing was a rounded edge and that any portion of a circle short of a whole one makes a cone when you put the straight edges together, duh. Ok, now what? How do I get a pie with a slice or two taken out? Well to make a whole circle I usually use flat round peyote so I figured I'd try it with some of the sections removed. My flat round peyote graph is for a six bead start, so it has six sections. I decided to use 3 sections or a half circle.

The following graph is what I used to make the bead shown. Notice I had to add an extra row in order to make it come out right, otherwise there would be an odd number of columns.

To use this graph simply treat it as though it were a whole flat round peyote graph. Start with three beads tied in a circle. For the second round add two beads between bead one and two, two beads between beads two and three and two beads between beads 3 and one. Continue adding rows as described in this tutorial for Flat Round Peyote Stitch until you reach the end of the graph. At this point you'll have half a bead. Now start working back toward the center of the graph skipping the outermost row. Instead of doing increases every third row, do decreases in the same spot instead. Try to keep your tension as firm as possible to avoid ending up with a mushy bead. These beads are light enough to be strung on regular heavy beading thread so go ahead and stuff your bead with fiberfill if you need to.

One neat thing about this is that you can change the size and shape of the bead you end up with by using more of fewer sections and/or more or fewer rows. Using more sections makes a wider less "steep" cone and more rows makes the bead longer from hole to hole.

Here is a graph for a much larger bead.