The only materials needed for the suit will be three or four large chamois skins--or two yards of brown denim if the chamois seems too expensive for the young Indian’s pocketbook--some red and blue porcelain beads which may be bought in strings at any dry goods store for a few cents a string, a spool of heavy cotton thread, and a little patience. With a coarse needle, and a pair of scissors the boy will be ready for work. Making an Indian suit will fill a great many rainy afternoons full of fun.
The bead belt is the best part of the suit to begin with because a boy can experiment with designs as he weaves the beads together, and he will be able to form an idea of the pattern he wishes to use when he embroiders the shirt and the moccasins. One will need a bead loom on which to make the belt. These looms may be bought at a toy shop, but that is not really necessary. An old box will do quite as well for a loom. The belt in the picture was started on the cover of an old shoe box, and a cigar box with the cover and the bottom removed makes a fine bead loom. In making a loom from a wooden box, very small screw eyes may be put in the ends of the loom, about one quarter of an inch apart to hold the threads. In the card board cover shown in the picture, the warp threads--those are the lengthwise threads in the weaving--are held in place by pins to which they were knotted at the ends of the loom.
Fourteen threads are strung on the loom for a section of the belt, as tightly as the card board will allow of their being stretched. A needle is then threaded with the coarse cotton thread, and the end is tied to the warp thread at the top of the loom at the left. The needle is then brought out to the right below the warp strands, thirteen red beads--one less bead than the number of the warp strands, remember--are strung on the thread, and the beads are pressed up between the warp strands so that one bead comes between every two threads. The needle is then run back from right to left through the beads _above_ the warp threads. This makes one row of beads securely woven to the warp. For the second row of beads, six red beads, one blue one and six more red ones are strung, the blue bead forming the beginning of a simple design. The third row has three blue beads in the center, the fourth has five, the fifth three, and the sixth one, completing the design. A row of red beads is then woven in, after which the unit of design was repeated.