Contemporary Geometric Beadwork

I miss all of you so much. Please don't infect anyone with COVID today. I hope to be back on Facebook soon but it's still a bit much. Read up if you'd like to catch up on where I'm at with CGB, and our books. Edit team, heads up, new reader copies will be your way soon.

Updates Greetings, all, and apologies for my long silence. It’s been a long recovery from being reinfected with COVID in November, and now fully eight months later I’m on a big medication (Dupi…

Greetings to you all from a sunny, flower-filled Savannah. Do you follow the Book Blog? If so, you will receive our monthly updates, free patterns, etc.

Find and follow us at:
www.ContemporaryGeometricBeadwork.com

I received an email today from one of our followers alerting me to the fact that there has been some negative talk on Facebook about me personally, and/or the release of our books. I am not on FB right now for various reasons, and I didn't want to hear about this, but now that I have I would like to address this very simply.

There is no reason for anyone to be on our pre-order wait list other than to support our team. Our discoveries are always free to all, and our books will be for sale worldwide when published. If you are on our pre-order list for signed first editions from our studio and would like to come off, the policy has always been the same: just let me know, and I will issue a full refund, no questions asked. Email me at kate@katemckinnon anytime.

If you are not on our pre-order list, there is no reason for you to have any opinion whatever on our publication schedule.

If you are unaware of what CGB is (a non-profit research team) and what we do (publish all of our ideas for free, support beaders, and fund fellow artists) then now you know. Every single discovery (and multiple books worth of ideas, videos and patterns) are available entirely for free on our YouTube channel and at our web site. There is no need to purchase anything from CGB to have the benefit of our full twelve years of research.

Since the publication of our first books, we have spent every dollar we have earned supporting artists. We have given over $350,000 in grants and stipends, bought hundreds of airplane tickets and hotel rooms for beaders around the world to join our discovery sessions, hosted tons of all-expenses paid discovery sessions for our artists and relentlessly supported the open-source release of basic information in beadwork. We've donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of beads to individual artists and an entire collection of finished work to museums.

I personally have not taken a dollar of from CGB for my own expenses or time since 2016, and I do not intend to do so in the future, rather this project exists entirely to propagate discoveries and to help others.

So: join us, enjoy us, or mind your own business, and if you'd like to catch up on where we are, who we are, and how our work is coming, follow our blog. I got hit pretty hard with COVID last year, and haven't been online much recently, but if you email me (again, [email protected]) you will hear back promptly.

Best,
Kate McKinnon
(beadwork in photo by Violetta Pretorius Beadwork, featured in our most recent post from this morning.)

www.ContemporaryGeometricBeadwork.com

It's time for us to update our big shipping address and email database- if you are on our book reservation list (or if you want to stay up to date on our publication info) could you click the link and sign up? If you are already on our list, you will get an email to confirm or update your mailing address. Thanks much! (Link is to the post on our web site, please click from there- this helps us keep count). Thanks!

Mailing list signup (or update) form PLEASE SIGN UP FOR (or update your entry in) THE CGB EMAIL AND MAILING LIST!Hello! We are building a shiny new mailing list for our new publications, and I would be most grateful if you would click…

Do you follow the Book Blog?
We have a few new updates, including a Zoom option to participate in our workshops, classes, and the MIT session coming up this January. Check it out!

Zooming along: online classes! Keep an eye on our Shop over the next months (and here on the blog) as we announce publications going to press, and as we add tons of new things in, including (by popular request) original artworks…

I'll have a big post up later today about books, bead kits, workshops, MIT in January 2024, and so much more, but I wanted to tell you that my beloved cat Miss Fish passed peacefully away on Saturday. Some of you knew her, as she was at least eighteen, and saw a lot of life (and hundreds of beading adventures in Tucson, Boston, DC and Savannah). Fair winds, darling girl.

Making a box for the new Museum of Beadwork- this is a small 24-Point Podcast Bead by Kathryn Shriver in the process of birthing a Rick-Rack and Casting Spine from its edge using a technique we call Deconstruction. The Podcast is about the size of a quarter but the Rick-Rack coming off of it is a large bangle size.

For those of you who followed along with Kathryn Shriver's excellent (and advanced) Reverse Starflower pattern, check out her Herringbone Seam being used to create double the potential folds in warped polygons- this means any type of Eggbox or other dynamic surface created by joining forms together will have as many as twice the ways to fold. Just... wow. Kathryn, you have done such astounding work on the CGB project since you joined the Research Team.

Summer and fall workshops are filling up fast, if you would like to join us in Savannah, please be sure to sign up (or let me know to save you a space) soon! The Black and White Together Project will be here in final assembly, plus a few extra surprises I can't quite talk about yet. If you've been wanting to join the CGB Research Team for an intensive, please do. Schedule at this link:
https://theunlab.bigcartel.com/products

Photo: Naomi Profesorsky with a piece of the portrait at one of our gatherings. Our space is fully ventilated with HEPA air cleaners in every room, windows and doors that open, and a gorgeous garden with a pool to bead by (bring your swimsuit!)

New summer and Fall CGB workshops are listed - four full days of intensive learning and gorgeous lunches with our team for a fee of $500, with every dollar going directly to our 2023 Research Fellows, Kathryn Shriver, Sam Norgard and Anvi Shah. I and others volunteer to teach these classes so our Fellowships can exist. Your support is greatly appreciated!

These summer and fall sessions are going to be extraordinary with the imminent completion of our first two books, the final assembly of Sam's Black and White Together project, and an exciting documentary film in process on our open-source team and our connection to math and science. Come and be a part of it all, and celebrate with us here in our home studio.

https://theunlab.bigcartel.com/products

Massive thanks to those who have been enthusiastically supporting us as we bring this 13-year project across the line.

For those of you who are interested, we will also be back at MIT this January 15-30 with a full team, the documentary film crew, and a working copy of our academic textbook. We'd love to see you there!

Thanks so much to Kelly Dale, Wendy Ellsworth, Tammy Alderman, Brenda Stone, Georgette Mayo, Sam Norgard, and Dawn Peterson for being a part of our last workshop. See our current schedule here:
https://theunlab.bigcartel.com/products

Wow, this was so long ago (as was my last visit to Facebook). I've got some neat updates coming soon, and I'm working on finishing a beautiful video preview of the new books, showcasing both the history and the Now of the research. Right now, we are preparing review spreads and contact info requests from all of the artists featured, as we'll be giving stipends to everyone whose work we have in our pages.

I sure miss you all, and will be with you shortly with new workshop dates, new bead kits, and the preview of our pages. Do you follow the Bead Blog? We have a new update up, and more to come.

www.ContemporaryGeometricBeadwork.com

Best,
Kate

Some nice beady fundraisers are up now for our Fellowships and Scholarships fund, and the CGB Pattern Book is once again available for pre-order. It won't be long now!
https://theunlab.bigcartel.com/products

Things are moving quickly for us now! Thanks to all who gave us feedback on our Star patterns.

Products Browse all products from The UnLAB /Contemporary Geometric Beadwork.

Star Spiral Swatch Pattern Release Greetings, all, and please enjoy the next free pattern release from our upcoming CGB Pattern Book, which is in final assembly right now. We will have another update tomorrow about books, workshops,…

Just popping in to say that today we released a special illustrated pattern, meant for Curious Beginners. It includes a tutorial to make a quick Short Spine, and then shows how to create a Star Spiral test swatch along the edge of the Spine and Deconstruct it by removing the thread of the first row. This is exciting stuff, if you've never seen it!

I was thinking a lot about 2010-2011, when geometric beadwork was about making flat polygons, and closed geometric boxes and puffs. At that time, increase lines were referred to in the context of corners.

I wanted to know what would happen if I unrolled the polygons to see a straight line of increases, and I challenged people to find language that would work to talk about increases suddenly springing up in otherwise flat work.

My call into the wild, "what is a corner if it is alone in a field" found fertile ground and our global exploration of Wings, Horns, and Geometric Spirals began.

Make a swatch and you Curious Beginners out there– let me know how it went. Email me at kate at katemckinnon dot com with photos or questions.

Star Spiral Swatch Pattern Release Greetings, all, and please enjoy the next free pattern release from our upcoming CGB Pattern Book, which is in final assembly right now. We will have another update tomorrow about books, workshops,…

Do you "Follow" the Book Blog? A bit of an update on our schedule, and peeks of the final two free releases before we send the paper book to the press. Why do we do it this way? Read the post to learn about our open-source style of giving, and why printing the paper books is always the very last thing we do in the discovery chain.

the spirit of giving Good morning all! We are finishing up the last two of the series of our free tutorials- the Star Spiral is coming up next, along with an easy lesson on making and using a Casting Spine. We’ll…

Here's a direct link to our new article in the Surface Design Journal, for those who were having trouble with the blog post link. A few small errors but that's the usual, I find.

Do you "Follow" the Book Blog? If so you get each update in your email. There are a few lovely surprises in today's post - a new professional journal article, and a donated piece from the trailblazing Joyce Scott. Go see!
https://beadmobile.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/welcome-to-a-new-year/

Did you all have any questions about our version of a Flat Six-Pointed Star pattern, or was it easy to follow? We want your feedback!

Superstar Patterns: The Flat Star Download This neat star pattern uses geometric pe**te stitch with two alternating increase/decrease progressions – the Triangle Increase (also known as the Herringbone Increase) and the Hexagon Decrea…

Next up in our free tutorials is the Casting Spine, which is an essential tool for making Star and other Geometric Spirals. Make one good Spine, and then cast as many Spirals as you like off of it, with no cold starts. This is a picture of a Casting Spine with a new piece growing on it in shiny black beads. When the new piece is stable, it can be removed.

Thanks to Joy Davison for contributing this stellar tool to our library.

Thanks for those who proofread our patterns and offered suggestions or corrections - the small list of material corrections remains at the bottom of this page on our site, but the PDFs have been updated and re-uploaded. Have fun and please let us know if you have questions as you work - we welcome your input. Feel free to share, but please share the link to our site instead of the PDF files? Thanks!

Superstars: Reverse Starflower Pattern Downloads This was one of the most interesting and difficult patterns for us to present, and while the Superstars chapter is still in final edit, we wanted to share the Reverse patterns now as a gift to the …

We added some words to our Basic Reverse Starflower summary to discuss the Slow Herringbone Decrease, and why it is not only a true decrease but a very interesting one, because it is both a gathered decrease (the first pass-throughs) and also a decrease by omission (later pass-throughs). Neat stuff.

If you want to make a Reverse Starflower but aren't experienced with multiple increase or decrease progressions, start with the Flat Star to get comfortable.

https://beadmobile.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/superstar-patterns-the-flat-star-download/?fbclid=IwAR3ArYDPqNsmR-QujQDxLaElG_olOJjD9wDl2xqN_4vJ_Ngd_fJgqJTGq0Q

Superstar Patterns: The Flat Star Download This neat star pattern uses geometric pe**te stitch with two alternating increase/decrease progressions – the Triangle Increase (also known as the Herringbone Increase) and the Hexagon Decrea…

The (advanced) Reverse Starflower patterns are now published on the CGB Book Blog!

Feel free to share, but would you please share the link to our web site instead of sending or re-publishing our PDF files? That way we will be able to watch with happiness as the patterns travel the world, and we can get a sense of how many people downloaded them. They are free to all, as our gift. This is the link:

Superstars: Reverse Starflower Pattern Downloads This was one of the most interesting and difficult patterns for us to present, and while the Superstars chapter is still in final edit, we wanted to share the Reverse patterns now as a gift to the …

We are continuing the free releases from our upcoming new book series with two Reverse Starflower patterns this evening, on the blog. Give it a "Follow" if you want our posts and patterns directly to your email. The Starflowers will be a part of the CGB Pattern Book, coming soon.

Superstar Patterns: The Reverse Starflower In 2021, we were continuing to revel in the freedom of linear creation brought by the Casting Spine (devised by Joy Davison) and writing up all of the ensuing (and enthralling) Spiral techniques. W…

The next pattern for release in our Superstars chapter is a tricky one - the Reverse Starflower by Kathryn Shriver. It was so intense that she beaded a sample of her piece at every round of our demo. Seen in volume, it looks like a world opening. This piece cleverly reverses the increase and decrease progressions of the Flat Star and then embellishes the edges. Free pattern in a day or two from the Edit Team. Our first pattern, the Flat Star, is here:
https://beadmobile.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/superstar-patterns-the-flat-star-download/

Have you ever made a Flat Six-Pointed Star before? We hadn't done it before last year, but we fell in love and made a whole CHAPTER of stars for our upcoming book. Here is a free link to download the Flat Star pattern we started with, with thanks to Susannah Thomson. I am sure that there are many ways to do it, but feel free to share ours.

The next pattern we drop will be Kathryn Shriver's amazing Reverse Starflower, an advanced concept that we worked hard to translate into a relatable pattern.

Superstar Patterns: The Flat Star Download This neat star pattern uses geometric pe**te stitch with two alternating increase/decrease progressions – the Triangle Increase (also known as the Herringbone Increase) and the Hexagon Decrea…

Lots to tell! Our first free technical release from the new books is coming up soon with excerpts from the Superstar chapter, showing our many riffs on a Flat Star sequence. Are you "Following" our web site? If so, you'll get the email as soon as we post the patterns. As always, our entire technical section will be free to all. Sit tight, we'll be with you soon!

www.ContemporaryGeometricBeadwork.com