- The art of the bead, including tambour beading, is one of the most beautiful art forms imaginable.

Our guest today, Robert Haven, has created works for A-listers and clients worldwide.

Many of his works are in museums around the world, as few can apply the art as masterfully as he does.

Sometimes we look at a high-end piece just to appreciate the work and not necessarily to master it ourselves.

Today may be one of those times.

Let's watch, learn, and appreciate the beauty of tambour today on "Fit 2 Stitch".

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- Whenever I get really excited about something, my hands flap, and I'm so excited.

Robert Haven today is just really the guy to learn beading from, tambour beading.

We've seen it, we may not know what it is, but Robert, thank you so much for being here.

And he's really just gonna teach us all the ins and outs.

And if we want to do it, or if we want to buy it, is that fair?

'Cause it's real pricey if we buy it.

- It's very pricey if you bought it, but it is learnable.

It is very learnable.

- So tell me how it even started for you.

'Cause beading is not everyday stuff.

- Not this kind of beading, is not.

I saw my first bits of tambour beading when I was in graduate school.

So a book put out by Lesage, then I couldn't afford it, the book, 'cause it was very expensive, but I remember it.

And then years later when I was the costume director at the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, I hired a lady from Puerto Rico who came in one day to help stitch.

And she brought this frame covered in beads and I said, "Aha, you know how to do this."

And she had learned from her grandmother in Puerto Rico and I hired her to come back the next year to teach a master class for my staff, myself, and my students.

And that was 1995 or thereabouts.

And I just kept working at it until I finally got it.

- Can any tambour beading be done on machine?

- There is a form of beading that you can do by machine.

It's a Cornely embroidery machine that was made in the 1880s, 1890s, that makes a chain stitch.

It puts on beads, it puts on sequins, but they have to have space in between each row because there's a pressure foot.

- So you could tell.

- Oh, I can look at something and I can tell you whether it was done in the French method or in India.

- So anything that I've seen on designer dresses, like maybe at price points of 2000, they would have to be done by machine?

- More than likely.

- Okay, 'cause I know Viscata, Chanel, some of these really high-end names use it, but I'm thinking that it couldn't be done at that price point by hand.

- No, no, not at all.

I mean you could get some basic beading done that way by hand, you know, and an element, a collar, cuffs, you know, a motif here and there, but to do a full, heavily-embroidered garment, you need the, you actually need to do it by hand.

That's the best way.

- So as you teach it, do you think the difficulty is in the, the actual, or the expense, I guess, in the actual hours it takes or is it the difficulty of the work?

- It's a combination.

It's a bit of a sharp learning curve because it's a tricky, it's not a hard technique, but it's a tricky one to learn because your left hand has to do 90% of the work.

- It has to, you can't reverse it.

- Well, you can, but the ladies at Lesage would roll their eyes and yes, it would cause an international incident.

- And I would imagine because I know in handwork sometimes left-handed or right-handed actually looks different in the final product.

- This doesn't, it's just that anyone who is left-handed, this is the only left-handed, or only embroidery technique that favors left-handed people because the left hand does 90% of the work.

And that's the biggest hurdle for most people to get over, unless.

- You're left-handed.

- Or you are of the younger generation and grew up texting with both fingers.

- So there is an advantage to all those.

- That's the one advantage out of cell phones and texting, that makes you easier to pick up tambour beading.

- Okay.

Will you start to show us?

You know, and I know I've said it, and I'm sincere in this.

Sometimes when we see something, it's not possible in our lifetime or, you know, it's not possible maybe with our schedules to learn something, but at least we can appreciate it and understand if we like it, then we have to purchase it.

But you teach it all the time.

- I teach it all the time.

That's that's what I spend most of my time doing, teaching the technique.

Because once you learn the technique, the basic stitch, there's thousands of things you can do with it.

- Let's show us.

- Let's move over to here.

- After you.

- So it's called tambour beading because your fabric is stretched tight as a drum on a frame and the tighter the fabric can be, the easier it is to stitch, so that it doesn't move when you stitch.

And it's all worked with a tiny little hook.

- So tambour meaning drum.

- It's drum in French.

- So each piece of the dress has to be-- - Has to be stretched on a frame.

- So how is that done in a dress or in something like that that's dimensional?

You just have to take it apart?

You have to do it before you put the dress together.

- Bingo.

You have to have your pattern worked out, all of your fitting changes done, so that then you trace your final pattern shape on your fabric, stretch the fabric, do the embroidery and then.

- Okay, you could be doing this while you're probably talking on the phone, but what, tell me.

- Yeah, yeah.

(laughing) - Tell me what you do.

This is, what is, this is your needle?

- This is my hook.

This is what's doing the, it's catching the thread.

And between each stitch, I don't know if you can see, but I'm pushing up the bugle bead.

- [Peggy] Oh, I can.

I see.

- And then I put the hook in, wrap the thread around the bead, turn the hook, snap it in place, push against the back and bring it up, and then bring up another bead.

- Okay.

You said that really fast.

Let's do that again.

- [Robert] So the beads are underneath, and you push one bead up, and then you make a stitch just to the end of the bead and you plunge, wrap the thread, turn the hook.

- [Peggy] Oh, so right now is when you're going through the bead, you just went through the bead.

- [Robert] No, you're not going through the bead.

You're going just around the thread.

And then you bring the hook up, go forward again.

- [Peggy] Oh, I see what you're saying.

- Plunge.

That's what my thumb is doing.

- I get it.

You're not going through the bead.

- No.

That's how they do it in India.

They put their hook through the bead, and that's why they can't use bugle beads, because their hooks won't go through them.

So the mantra is plunge.

- Okay.

- Wrap.

- Got it.

- [Robert] Turn, snap, release your thread tension underneath, push against the back of the hook, bring it up, turn forward, and do another one.

- And that's because there is a little hook there, and the turning of it.

- There is a little hook.

And if you don't put pressure on the back of the hook, when you go to bring it up, it will catch on the fabric or it'll catch on the thread.

This technique is best described as a dance of the hands executed with the precision of the tango and the grace of a waltz.

- Wow.

- Because if one little thing is not, see, I'm caught.

It's because I didn't have my hook lined up.

- [Peggy] But you can always go back in and pick it up.

- You can, if you're clever enough to make sure you don't ever leave the beads, don't leave your hand underneath.

Come on.

There we go.

But if you let go of the beads underneath, it's all gonna come out.

- And when you were doing a, before you started and you put the beads on the thread, did you just figure out how many beads you wanted on that line?

- No, the beads come like this in a big hank, bugle and seed beads.

Loose beads are not, well, you can put them on a bead spinner and put your own on, but this is the most efficient way.

You just transfer one hank or one strand at a time, because if you have too many beads on here, it creates too much tension in the thread because the thread's gotta come off here through all these beads underneath and then be worked with your hand.

And if it's too many, then they twist underneath.

So it's one strand at a time.

And then when you're finished, like when I finished this row, I'll knot it off, and then I'll start another row.

And the sequins work same way, except that they're big flat, they're big flat sequins.

And you're just taking a stitch in between each one.

- So how do you know your pattern back here?

- It's just traced on.

You can trace it out on paper.

And this is just pencil lines, because the beads are gonna cover them.

And this is the back of the fabric.

- And how do you know which beads to put where?

- Well, you work off your pattern.

I know that this, the background of this is gonna have these rows of bugle beads.

And there's little sequins and seed beads here and there.

- So the expense here is not expensive beads either.

- No, these are pennies compared to the, it's the time, it's the labor.

- It's the hand labor and all the work that goes into it.

- Yeah.

- Incredible.

- And the frame can be any size.

This is a travel frame.

- Do you see patterns in tambour beading?

Like, I noticed there's all different patterns.

- Oh, all kinds, you can do anything.

- Are they representative of a history or a timeframe?

- No, it's mostly a style.

This particular pattern came off of a dress from the actual '20s.

And that came off of a book on gold metal embroidery.

That was the pattern, and I just liked the pattern.

I said, I'm gonna do it in beads.

- [Peggy] And even the colors, you chose all those colors and everything?

- Yeah, 'cause I had a lot of them.

- Let's go look and see what else you've done.

This is pretty cool stuff.

- So this is, as I say, it came off of a '20s dress, an actual Duet dress from the '20s.

And what I did was one of my bucket list projects was to work with a museum.

And this was from the Museum of Fashion History in Cambridge, Ontario, where they allowed me to come sit in their gallery for two weeks and reproduce this garment.

And the original is on the table.

And it's too fragile to be put on a form.

- That's an amazing honor when you're really recreating, because what gives way is those fabrics.

The fabrics just-- - The fabrics disintegrate.

- Don't last.

- So we worked through photos to get as close to the beads as possible to the original.

And I worked in the gallery so that people could see how these dresses were made in the '20s.

And it created quite an interest because I had a big, great big frame, a six-foot frame.

And I just sat there and worked.

And people came in with their little kids and they could get underneath the frame to see what I was doing because they were little and I had mirrors for the adults.

'Cause it's not as dignified for them to do that.

- So this original was, this dress was from Paris.

- It was from Paris.

It was owned by one of three Canadian sisters who had the good sense to outlive all of this, all of their husbands and family and inherited everything and moved to Paris.

And when the last one died, her niece was clearing out the apartment, she found a whole host of couture garments from the '20s and '30s, sent them all to the Victoria and Albert.

- Aren't we fortunate that she had the good sense to know they were couture?

Just, you know, a lot of people would just.

- Just old clothes.

- Yes.

See, now I love this little shawl, would you call it?

- Yeah, it's a little wrap.

- Because I could see wearing that with jeans.

- Well, yes.

So the whole point with this, and this is a practice piece.

- Practice?

- Yeah, a practice piece.

So this is how you would wear it to go into the event.

So everybody comes in and sees all the beautiful beading and it's "Oh, isn't that lovely?

Isn't that lovely?"

Yes.

And then when it's time to leave, you put it on this way.

And then as you're leaving the event, they can also see the beautiful beads.

- And then again, all of this is done from this backside.

- Yeah, yeah.

And it's balanced.

That's why this is here, to balance the weight of the front, so that it sits, it doesn't pull on your neck.

- I notice with the jacket I have on it's like, totally not even moving.

I mean it's, but it's heavy, you know, as far as the amount of beading.

- It's balanced front to back and left to right.

That's the important thing about designing for beaded garments.

It's got to balance.

- So that's not a pattern maker per se.

That's more just someone who's really familiar with the beading process.

- If I'm working with a designer and they just want a beading over here, I have to convince them, no, you gotta balance it somewhere.

It's gotta have, 'cause otherwise it's all gonna pull.

- Sure, sure.

I can tell.

I mean, this just literally sits on me.

And then when you're using the color thread, you use that with your fabric, whatever?

- Well, most of the time I will either use black or white.

Unless the thread is going to show, and then I'll match the fabric, or I will use a metallic thread and let the thread sparkle as well, because these are all, these are opaque beads.

You can't see the thread through them.

- These are beautiful.

I mean, just incredible.

- Just another little practice piece.

I worked on this for like two weeks.

Most of the time I spent trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it, but I knew I had this fabric and I knew I wanted to do something vertical and kind of had an art deco thing to it.

And another practice piece, this was a practice to be able to do this particular satin stitch with the hooks.

You'll see that particular stitch is used throughout this piece.

- [Peggy] And the thread is on the front and the beading's coming from the back.

- [Robert] Yes, except these pieces were done on another frame, cut out, and then appliqued on.

- Show me this, this degree.

It's not a degree, but it's.

- It's a certificate, a professional certificate in hand embroidery and tambour beading from Lesage in Paris.

And this is the project that you do.

This was the preliminary piece, the practice piece, as it were, where you learn all the different techniques and then you work on this.

- [Peggy] So before you even got to this, how many hours do you think you, just.

- Oh, I'd practiced it for 10 years before I got to here, but I wasn't, I couldn't.

- It's not a number of hours.

- I couldn't, well, off and on, you know, I couldn't clearly understand why sometimes it worked and why sometimes it didn't.

- I see.

- And then I went to Paris and I didn't tell them I already knew how to use the hook, and that surprised the daylights out of them.

But normally people take about six, eight months to a year to do this class.

It's 150 class hours of instruction.

I did it in eight weeks, and then I did about 300 hours outside of class.

I was in Paris for eight weeks and I never saw Paris.

All I saw was the back of that frame.

'Cause I was there, I was on a mission.

I was gonna do it.

And when I left, it was about 98% done.

- Any regrets on that not seeing Paris thing?

- No, 'cause Paris is still there.

I did see Notre Dame, and now thank God I did.

(laughing) While I was there.

- So this is, then, the dress that you were given originally, but what you were saying is some of these beads you couldn't even.

- No, you can't find these particular little, they're beautiful little matte opaque tiny half demi-tubes is what they call them in France.

- But again, even in that time, it wasn't so much the cost of the bead as the time involved in putting that in.

- This particular dress would have been a high-end dress in its day because it's got multiples of beads and sequins and different things.

Most of the off-the-rack pieces that were made, and they were made, literally, sometimes they could crank out a dress a day, were usually all the same bead.

A different design, but all the same beads.

So then they didn't have to stop and change and go back.

- So you would know the difference.

Many would not.

- No, no.

And you can tell that these bugle beads have tarnished, so they're not as sparkly, but when you look at this one with the light, when it hits it, you can imagine what it looked like when it went into a supper club in the '20s.

- Sure, the dimension, too, of those beads is just incredible.

So we have a little fun little thing over here.

- Yeah.

So before I did the class at Lesage, I did some more practice and this was my, one of my practice pieces.

- This is practice?

- 2008 World of Wearable Art entry.

It was one of four from the U.S. - [Peggy] Wait, you said that really fast.

2008.

- World of Wearable Art in Nelson, New Zealand.

It was one of eight.

- That's a worldwide.

- It's a worldwide fashion show, art fashion show.

And yeah, we were, there was four of us from the U.S. that got in that year.

- So it's a juried show?

- It's a juried show, yes.

There were 350 applicants, they picked 128.

And as I say, there were four of us from the U.S. and in the show there, you never saw the back of the dress.

- [Peggy] Because she kept the kimono on for the entire time?

- She kept the kimono on for the entire time.

- Oh my goodness gracious.

- But it also has a design on it.

This is very heavy.

- [Peggy] I mean, that is just incredible.

- I mean, you could, you could do a Charleston in that with no trouble because, and that's why I picked that particular time period.

Because it was the golden age of beading.

And that kimonos were also a favorite garment at that time.

- Just try and show the back.

- And that gave me big flat spaces to decorate.

- [Peggy] And then the head gear.

- [Robert] And the headpiece, yeah.

It's a little cloche type hat.

- It's just absolutely stunning.

- But I have to tell you.

- When you look at that, are you just so proud of yourself?

- It's like, geez, I did that.

- You don't look and say "Oh, there's a problem here, there's a problem here," do you?

- The couple of things that I use it for a lot is if you come over here, you could, I challenge you to find the shoulder seam.

There is one in there and there is a dart, there are bust darts, but they're hidden.

- [Peggy] I can tell you where the bust dart is.

- You can see the bust dart, but you can't, it's hard to tell, the way the beads.

- I can't see the bust dart, but you just probably built it in in here, didn't you?

- Yeah, it's right here at the end of the beading.

- Because it doesn't matter where it comes from, as long as it goes into that bust circle.

Hey, we're war buddies there.

- But the shoulder seams I was particularly proud of because I had to start my beading there so that they matched right up at the seam line.

It didn't matter where they ended here.

- And they'll start going in different directions.

- And it had the exact same number of beads across the shoulder.

- So this is just knowledge on top of knowledge on top of knowledge, it's a lot of knowledge in a lot of arenas.

Is that a fair statement?

- Yes, well, it's the combination of many years of training as a cutter draper in the theater.

So I know patterning, I know construction.

I know how things go together, and then applying that knowledge to, okay, how can I hide that seam?

And when I'm laying something out, which is important for any embroidery, when I'm laying it out on the garment, I need to know where those seam lines are, where those dart lines are, so that I can bring the, either start the embroidery right from there and go away from it.

So when you seam it together, it matches, and that's important.

And it has to be done in the process of construction.

So you have to kind of start with your embellishment idea, then design the outfit, then pattern fit it, do all of that.

Then start the embroideries.

'Cause once you start the embroideries, there's no going back.

- It has to be done.

- There's no going back.

If you decide, or the designer changes their mind and you have to redo it, the price just went up by another zero.

(both laughing) - Elizabeth, thank you.

But I'm looking at, Robert, the angle of the shoulder seams that you've got right on.

I mean, all of that is just.

- No, I've made a few dresses in my days.

The other cool thing about tambour is it doesn't have to be done with beads and sequins.

This was all stitched with the hook, just with thread, just a little teeny chain stitch.

- Now this done by thread, this is done from the right side.

You don't have to work at the back side, and then it's just.

- Because on the, when it's done on the backside, you see a chain stitch and on the front side, with beads, it's just a single thread.

So you turn it over so you get the chain stitch on the front and then it fills in and you can do, this was all done on the front with the chain stitching and the blending of the colors.

- [Peggy] Was this done by you?

- Oh yeah.

That's my company logo.

That's my business logo.

- That's just beautiful.

The difference in tambour work and hand-stitching is, this was done at the Royal School of Needlework for my certificate in silk shading.

Seven days of constant stitching to do that.

This same pattern was done in 10 hours with the hook.

Now it's not as fine as this, but on a garment?

Seven days to 10 hours.

- So in this case, that's a big difference, time-wise.

In this case, you're using still all silk threads.

- Cotton, you begin to see cotton embroidering.

- And are you using cotton still?

So literally just, it's the method of what you're doing.

- It's the technique, yes.

But as I say, you can make all kinds of things.

This is actually the top, the bodice top for a tutu.

I did it for a tutu class.

So that would be how it would work, and you could applique it onto a tutu for performance, take it off, and change it.

- So on this one, I'm curious, Like, what's on the front and what's done from the back?

This working from the back fascinates me because I think I'm such a visual person.

It's hard for me.

Do you find that you lose control when you go to the back?

- No, I can swap back.

- 'Cause you've done it.

- I've done it enough.

- You've practiced a few hours.

- You can see these huge long stitches here on the back.

Those are holding on these beads that are underneath all this fluff.

And then you weave the stuff through it.

- I don't mean to interrupt, but whenever I see layers like this, what comes first, second, third, like, how.

- You put the foundation on, which is the.

- So you're on the front side.

- Well, no, you're on the backside 'cause you're putting on these beads and then this stuff is woven through the beads.

This is eyelash yarn.

- Oh, so you've got the beads on first, and then you come in.

- This wool is woven through the beads to make it a weave to look like this.

And then these petals were taken apart from silk flowers, strung on a thread like a bead and then put on with, I think we can see it.

One, two, three, four stitches to put the flowers on and you just stitch it on like it is if it were a.

- So I'm sure you've heard the word visionary, but you don't have a pattern for this.

- No, I just started with the neckline.

- So you just literally draw a neckline of what it's gonna be, and then.

- Yeah, they gave me the neckline of a standard tutu, and I said, "Okay, we'll work from that."

And so all the class made one of these that they could then applique onto a Tutu.

- But you can also do a little camisole top.

- Oh, anything.

- It doesn't have to be.

- No, it could be anything.

Tutus are just worn by not as many people, right?

I don't do tutu stuff, but I could do a little tank top or something like that.

A little camisole.

- This also makes a fabulous neckline.

- Yeah.

I was gonna say, you could do it with any shape.

- And it's just eyelash knitting yarn woven in.

- So this is my favorite right here.

- Yeah, you can make.

- 'Cause I've never had a tiara in my whole life.

- I did these for dance people, because they're always wearing tiaras and things, but theirs that they made were very stiff and bulky.

Whereas these are soft wire that can lay flat.

They can work this way.

They can go all the way around a little ballet bun.

They could also be worn that way on the head.

And you could put probably 30 of them in a shoe box, and they're very light.

- They are very light, I was surprised.

You wouldn't even know they're on your head.

So what is it, you know, time-wise?

I know, I hate to ask you time, but I'm just so amazed at how patient you are.

- These took me a little bit longer because I was, I was working out the technique, but to make another one now, like this one here I made while I was teaching a class in Toronto while they were working, I just did it.

Yeah.

I just did it with the materials that I had.

- Okay.

This is incredible.

I mean, your talent.

This is, you know, the one thing about teaching.

I mean, yes, you can teach, but you can't replace how many years of all of this.

- Well, as I tell my students, I've already made all the mistakes so you don't have to.

- Aha, that's the big advantage.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Robert, thank you so much for being here.

You forgot that PBS story.

That was a good story.

- That's how I got started embroidering.

1973, out of college, watching PBS in Boston, from WGBH, and Erica Wilson, "Needleplay".

And that's what started me on embroidering and I've been embroidering ever since.

- So it's come full circle.

- It's come full circle.

- Back to PBS.

- Back to PBS, exactly.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

It's just, you know, I guess I'm fascinated just as to what you can do with a needle and thread.

Next time, we'll investigate a little bit of scarf magic.

We'll learn the sizes, the shapes, the finishes, the trends in designer scarves next time on "Fit 2 Stitch".

(mellow music) - [Announcer] "Fit 2 Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors.

Bennos Buttons.

OC Sewing, Orange County.

Vogue Fabrics.

Pendleton.

Imitation of Life.

And Clutch Nails.

To order a four-DVD set "Fit 2 Stitch" series nine, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.