Free Brick Stitch Pattern Designer — Draw Your Own Brick Stitch Pattern

In brick stitch the beads stand on end: the thread passes down through a bead, under the bridge between two beads of the row below, and back up through the same bead. So the hole runs vertically, and what you see across a row is the bead’s width, about 1.6 mm for a Miyuki Delica 11/0, while each row adds the bead’s length, about 1.4 mm. A piece 20 beads wide and 30 rows tall is roughly 3.2 by 4.1 cm. The chart uses the same ratio — cells are a little wider than they are tall — and the finished-size line does the multiplication for you.

Because alternate rows are offset by half a bead, the outermost beads of a shaped piece step in by half a bead per row, not a whole one. That is why brick stitch triangles have such clean edges — a one-bead decrease every row gives an apex of about 60 degrees — and why a diagonal drawn on a square grid never quite matches. On this chart what you draw is what you get.

Every brick stitch piece starts with a ladder-stitch row — beads stitched side by side through their holes, which gives the first row the thread bridges everything else hangs from. A bead is added into each bridge, and a row of N beads has N−1 bridges, so a plain row worked into them comes out one bead narrower. Keeping the width is a small trick at the start of each row: the first two beads share the first bridge. Decreasing is simply leaving the trick out; increasing means adding a second bead on the last bridge as well.

That asymmetry is why shaped pieces start at the widest row and decrease outward. The Rows panel picks that row as the base automatically, lists the rows above it in working order, and — when there are rows below the base, as in a diamond — tells you to turn the piece and work down from the base again. The chart row numbers on the ruler stay fixed, so a row you talk about is the same row in the panel, on the chart and in the PDF.

Each row in the panel and beside the chart carries its bead count and its Delica codes in the order you pick them up, reading in the arrow’s direction. “dec 1” means the row is one bead narrower than the row it is stitched into; “inc 1” one wider. A row narrower by one on each side — dec 2 — is a steep decrease and worth a second look, because two skipped bridges in one row pull the edge in sharply.

The counts are what you order from. A 19-bead-wide triangle 19 rows tall has 190 beads, not 361; the Materials list counts what is actually placed, per DB code, so a pair of earrings is that list twice. A 7.2 g tube of Delica 11/0 holds about 1,200 beads, which is why a colour used for a dozen beads in the whole piece is a candidate to swap into its neighbour — one tube fewer to buy.

Brick stitch is usually worked with a single thread — FireLine 6 lb or a nylon such as Nymo D or KO — on a size 10 or 11 beading needle. Tension is set in the ladder row: a loose ladder gives a wavy base that no amount of later tension straightens, so ladder tightly and keep the working rows only firm. Fringe hangs from the bottom row and is strung, not charted: a strand per base bead, or every other one, with the strands lengthening toward the centre. Count the fringe beads into your order separately; the chart counts the body only.

Drawing the motif on a square grid and being surprised that the stagger turned every diagonal; laddering the narrow end and then fighting increases up the whole piece; forgetting that alternate rows are offset and mirroring a design half a bead off; choosing two silver-lined Delicas a shade apart that look identical under a lamp; and printing the chart without the row counts, then losing count at row 20. Draw the widest row first, leave cells empty to shape, keep the Rows panel open while you draw, and export with the ruler on.