Designer in the Spotlight, Bead-Patterns.com

Gail Jewell
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Gail Jewell
by Sigrid Wynne-Evans © January 2004

Gail Jewel creates some WONDERFUL dragonflies. They are truly spectacular and can be used for a variety of projects. You’ll want to make them by the dozen.

She has a delightful way of looking at the world around her. I hope that you will enjoy reading her story in her own words.

When I read the E-mail from Rita asking me to "Please" talk about myself I had to laugh out loud. No one who knows me would give me permission to do that! That I LOVE to talk in general and about myself in particular will soon become apparent.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan to a very adventuresome Mother. When I was 11 and my brother was 13 she decided to drive the three of us to Big Delta, Alaska where my Aunt had been telling her there was BIG money to be had by all and sundry in the way of wages. What Aunt Joan did not tell her was the cost of living was sky high there. Our trip up there is another story entirely. We only stayed in Alaska for 5 months but I have never forgotten it as the most beautiful place on this Earth. My mother’s next adventure took us from Detroit to Los Angeles, where we remained until I married.

I met and married my present Husband, Pete, here in Needles, California before the ink was dry on my divorce papers. We have been together for 34 years and still like each other. He is a very tolerant man. He seems to enjoy my flights of fancy and actually tries to help me achieve whatever hair-brained scheme I come up with. Well, what can I say? None of my husbands have ever been bored.

Pete and I had a "his and hers" family, consisting of the two girls I contributed and his son and 2 daughters. I moved from a quiet farm life into a house hold much akin to the floor of the New York stock exchange an hour before closing time. To say that it rattled my cage is an understatement. All the children liked to bring friends home for dinner so I regularly cooked for ten or more. This was all very confusing to me as I am not usually paying attention to what’s going on around me. Projects to be figured out, you know. When I saw a child I didn’t recognize at the dinner table, I would make them name one of our children before I would feed them. For years after the last child grew up and moved out, their friends (whom I did not recognize when they were little) would stop me on the street to tell me how much fun they had at my house and how much they liked my cooking. I just smiled, nodded my head in the appropriate places and tried to pretend I knew them.

While living in Needles, we also had a ten-acre farm that we divided our time with. We raised cattle, horses, goats, pigs, chickens and a few sheep. I also grew a very large garden which I never had time to weed so I just made sure I fertilized enough for both weeds and vegetables. There were times at the end of summer when I was forced to crawl on hands and knees thru the weeds to find the veggies. We produced at lot of the food it took to feed our brood plus half the kids in Needles.

Now-a-days, we still have the goats and chickens and I still garden but on a much smaller basis and I never cook for anyone but my Sweetie and me.

All during the time that the kids were growing up I took Art classes at the local school and I took a course from "Famous Artist’s School" (created by, Norman Rockwell, Dong Kingman, and Ben Stahl to name a few) in fine art painting. They tried to get me to take the cartooning course because they thought I showed real talent in that area but I scorned such nonsense. Here, all these years later, am I making silly glass bead critters on the torch? I guess I’ve lightened up a bit. See some of my glass work at www.GlassArtists.org/GAIL

Pete was a very hard-working Railroad man and served fourteen years on the City Council. He was the Mayor for a year, thinking that would amuse me. He was also the photographer for the local newspaper. When Pete couldn’t go to take news photos, I was pressed into service (yet another story). We also helped to set up the paper for printing each week. I have rarely held a "day" job and those I had were for very short periods of time. I just had too much to do to work for pay. Pete has been retired for eleven years now. If I had known how much fun it is to get old, I would have done it sooner!

I did write feature articles for two magazines, "International Dairy Goat Journal" and "United Caprine News" for five years. So I live in infamy around the world (in dairy goat circles anyway). I also have been a Porcelain Doll artist and had a doll kit mail order business for all most 9 years.

Needles boasts their very own Indian Tribe, the Mojaves. When I saw their bead work I knew I just had to do that so I got a little craft store type loom and began to teach myself. Soon I progressed into making my own looms to accommodate my large pieces. I still have only one piece of my early loom work as it is a belt that I did for Pete. The patterns are on site, the SSSSSSSSnakes. Just about everything I did was given away as gifts. I don’t do that any more. Now, I greedily hoard all my work for my own pleasure. I’ve been beading off and on for about 30 years. When I started there were no personal computers and no on-line buying so the most difficult thing about beading was finding supplies.

Needles is a very small town in southern California hundreds of miles from any metropolitan areas. I have used some pretty weird things for thread, including dental floss. It was nylon then and worked out pretty well. One night the beading bug hit me and I had no dental floss so I looked around the house for something to use. I discovered a spool of fishing line that was the right size. No one in the house knew where that spool came from, no fishermen in our house. I never did find out how it got here. Now, all these years later, I am still using fishing line. I really like the braided line "Fireline" and use it most. I am still using monofilament for white or clear beads, when I need more body and for the warps when I loom as it makes pulling the warps fool-proof.

The discovery of "Bead and Button" magazine opened up a whole new avenue of beading. Boy, did I learn a lot from it!

I resisted the computer age with all my might for as long as I could. But then Pete got bit by that bug and had to have one. I am the director of a small ladies barbershop chorus and occasionally write or arrange music so he got me started by buying me a music writing program for my birthday and then had to put up with all that cussing! It serves him right! He decided that he wanted to build computers and so off to college he went (at age 71). Now every time he hears too much cussing, he builds me a new computer. I’ve had four so far. I claim that it’s the bead graphs that are giving my computers a nervous breakdown..he says not so, but I stubbornly cling to my theory and plead the Fifth. He is getting smarter, my fifth computer is ready when I break this one.

Once I discovered the Net, I was hooked and it wasn’t long before I found Bead-Patterns. I also found the sites of a lot of very talented designers and began to see that my ideas were not so far out after all. I clicked on "Designer Info" and joined up.

I have a small desk and a chest of drawers as my beading workspace which faces the TV. Pete and I watch movies at night when ever we can and that’s when I do my beading. I never have been able to sit still so must have something to do with my hands while I watch the television. Pete is very considerate and tells me when I need to look up to keep up with what ever is going on with the movie. I’ve tried to watch when he wasn’t here and have to spend way too much time backing the movie up to see what I missed.

I am a true Gemini so I wear a lot of different hats. This tends to limit the amount of time I am able to spend with any of my diverse interests. I am also a died-in-the-wool LONER so rarely follow anyone. The ideas of others serve to fuel my flights of fancy that end up at an entirely different place than I started, but I have learned a great deal about techniques from other designers and place high value on the generosity of those who put up tutorials on their sites. I have never attended a class on beading, no such thing available out here so all that I have learned has been thru books, magazines and now web sites.

My goals in beading? To cram as much fun into 24 hours as possible. To do only what I LOVE so my work can reflect that quality.

My greatest achievement? To have come to know that HAPPINESS IS A CONDITION OF THE MIND, ONE I PERSONALLY DECIDE TO CREATE, AND HAS NOTHING WHAT SO EVER TO DO WITH WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE OF MY MIND.

HAPPY BEADING YA’LL! ..GAIL JEWELL

Gail Jewell View Patterns - e-mail



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