Bead sizes and pegboards: which is for what

Midi at 5 mm is the standard. Mini at 2.6 mm is for detail, maxi at 10 mm is for small hands.

Midi beads are 5 mm across. They are what almost every box on the shelf contains, what almost every pattern you find online is drawn for, and what every pattern here is measured against. If nobody has told you otherwise, you have midi.

The arithmetic that follows from 5 mm is worth knowing by heart. A full square 29×29 pegboard finishes at about 14.5 cm on a side and holds 841 beads. The small 14×14 comes out at 7 cm — keyring size. The large 57×57 is 28.5 cm and 3,249 pegs.

Mini beads are 2.6 mm, so the identical pattern comes out at just over half the size, and every detail in it doubles in sharpness. They are the right choice for jewellery and for anything that has to look like a picture rather than like beads. They are the wrong choice for a child, and hard on adult eyes after an hour.

Maxi are 10 mm and go the other way: four times fewer beads for the same finished size, thick enough for small fingers to place one-handed, and finished inside an afternoon. Under about five years old this is the only size worth buying.

The three sizes do not mix on one board — the peg spacing is different for each — but a picture designed for one converts to another with no redrawing at all. The grid stays the same; only the centimetres change.

Pegboard shape decides the edge of the finished piece, not what you can put on it. Squares and rectangles are the ones that tile: butt two together and you can run a picture across both, which is how people make anything bigger than 29 beads wide.

Round, hexagonal, heart and star boards are meant to be a whole finished object. A subject that runs off the edge of one looks like a mistake rather than a crop, so choose the shape first and fit the picture to it, not the other way round.

Transparent boards are worth the small extra over opaque ones for one reason: you can lay the printed pattern underneath and read it straight through the pegs, instead of looking from the sheet to the board and back and losing your place on both.