hi i'm megan sabres with the grain of sand and today we're going to learn basic ladder stitch for today's project you're going to need fireline in the six or eight pound test i'm using a six and i'm using the smoke color although there's nothing wrong with using the crystal or white color depending on the color of your beads size 10 or 11 beading needles in either the tulip brand or the john james brand scissors to cut your fireline and three millimeter or size one bugle beads and optionally johnson and johnson band-aid brand waterproof half-inch finger tape to protect your fingers starting with one arm's length of thread so from the center of your chest all the way out i want you to thread your needle a single thickness and pick up two bugle beads and slide them down to within a few inches of the end how long you leave your tail thread generally depends on what you're going to be doing with the project in this case we're just going to do a sampler so leaving four or five inches so that you can hold on to it is plenty at this point in time your tail thread is facing down and your working thread is facing up i want you to continue up through your bugle beads pull up your thread and help them to sit alongside one another and then reinforce if desired to reinforce you would continue up through the bead that your tail thread is coming out of and down through the right hand bead you're always going to work towards the right and you'll always want to end your stitch coming out of the right hand bead no matter what so at this point time you see my working thread is now coming down out of my right hand bead and you want to keep an eye on that where your thread is at coming down out of or coming up out of at the end of every stitch because it's going to be the opposite every stitch so this stitches down the next stitch is going to be up etc etc so in this case we're coming down so i want you to add a bugle bead and go down pull up your thread help your bead and then you'll want to reinforce by going up through the new bead you just added down through the middle bead and up through the end bead ending coming out of the right hand bead now i'm coming up out of the right hand bead i want to add a bead and go up through the right hand bead pull up your thread help your bugle to sit alongside and then reinforce by continuing the circle that you just made because that's essentially what we're doing is we're continuing a circle so i need to go down careful not to hold them apart up and down reinforcement is a matter of personal preference i just like how it really creates a structure and a stability some people may not prefer that but that is my preference and so that's why i'm showing it i'm going to do a few more stitches just so that you can see and then you'll go off and try it on your own so i'm coming down so i'm going to go down coming out of the end coming up so i go up finish coming out of the end one more coming down finish coming out of the end so this is what it looks like finished and then depending on what beads you use it looks a little different so for instance here it is with a single size 8 seed bead but you can also use two beads per side if you don't have bugles or if you just only have a certain color or whatnot so here are delicas where i used size 11 delicas and two beads per side per stitch i added two beads instead of just one and here are regular size 11 seed beads two per side so you can really adjust it to whatever you need for your project naturally we just keep going until however long your pattern says so go give it a try um don't worry if your beads kind of come apart for those first few stitches as you saw once i got to like the fifth or sixth stitch um mine kind of came apart so you just kind of have to weedle it around and readjust it if you need to take that bead off and go try it again then do that but i don't want you to be scared of this i want you to give it a try try it with different beads try it with longer bugles try it with shorter bugles try it with you know triangle beads for that matter and see what works for you you