I’ve wanted to make one of Diane Fitzgerald’s slinky tubes for a while — these instructions are in her Zulu Inspired Beadwork, published by Interweave, and in her self-published More Zulu Beadwork.  Her instructions are for a 4-sided tube, and state that they can be made up to 10-sided.  Since I tend to try to fly before I can walk, this, my first one, is 8-sided.  Instructions state to bead over a dowel, but because there is a substantial difference in size between the starting ring and the increased dimension of the full stitch, it didn’t really work for me.  I held the tube in my fingers instead.  The first couple of rows looked like a mess, as beadwork often does.  By the time I hit the 3rd row, it looked like a flower.

(I could not get a clear picture of this, the ab beads and the multi-layer threw it off, sorry.)

Here’s after 5 rows, very neat look.  The brown is about a size 10 Italian, a gorgeous bead, and the blue is a size 10 Czech.

I like this, but it’s just too big at 15mm diameter.  To make this a wearable piece for me, I want something smaller.  I think these beads are too big for this many sides of this stitch.  Diane writes that this stitch works for both Delicas and seed beads.  I’ll go back to the drawing board and try again.