Right-angle weave: squares of four

Bench guide · reviewed November 2026 · units of four, shared sides, the app's flat RAW

What right-angle weave is

Right-angle weave — RAW, once you're friends — joins beads in squares of four: one bead along the top, one along the bottom, a bead on each side. The thread only ever turns at right angles between them, which is where the name comes from; Wikipedia's summary of the stitch describes the thread as making only right-angle turns. Sides are shared: units side by side share the bead between them, and the new row shares its top bead with the one above. The app's lesson ends that sentence with the stitch's whole character: so the work bends like fabric.

That bending is the difference between RAW and every grid stitch on this site. Square stitch and herringbone build stiff panels; RAW builds a net whose squares pivot on their shared beads, which is why a RAW band lies along a wrist and a RAW cuff hugs instead of standing off it. Pull the rings snug as you go and the squares stay firm; the fabric is real, but so is the cloth's body.

One more habit that makes RAW its own craft: the app counts units, not cells. Four units across sits on five chart columns, because the shared beads between units are chart cells too — and the chart's rows take turns, rows of beads lying along the units' tops and bottoms, then rows of beads standing at the sides. Its Make step simply says which bead goes where: top, bottom, left side or right side.

The supplies, honestly minimal

The counts: units, chart, and what a 7 inch buys

The app's RAW sizes are named in units — 4 units across, 7 in long — and their arithmetic works like this: one unit measures about a bead's length plus its width, less a tenth for round beads nestling at the corners. For an 11/0 round (1.4 mm long, 2.1 mm wide) that's 3.15 mm a unit; for an 8/0, 4.59 mm. No maker publishes a RAW gauge, so the app flags it an estimate — the bead and unit counts, though, are exact.

A repeat of the chart shares its top bead row with the repeat before — a repeat is one chart row fewer than the pattern shows — and the app picks the whole number of repeats closest to your 7 in target:

Honesty about that last row: nine repeats is the closest whole repeat to 7 in, and it lands a shade under — add one more repeat of the cuff's pattern if you want the full 7 inches. Widths don't drift like lengths do: they're units × the unit size plus one bead's width from edge bead to edge bead, counted from the outside of the outermost beads.

The app's beginner examples both hang in this space: the Two-color band, three units across and two down in size 8 rounds (cobalt on white), and the Checkerboard, four units across in 11s. The pattern packs name their RAW weaves for what they look like — crosses, checks, stripes, columns, diamonds, zigzags, lattice — and every one of them is the same four corners moved around.

The first unit: four beads, a ring, and a habit

1. The tail. Leave about 6 in (15 cm). RAW finishes by weaving tails back through the squares, so the tail needs somewhere to live.
2. Pick up 4 beads and go through the first one again to pull them into a ring. Then go on through the next two, so the thread comes out of the bead opposite the first. Fire Mountain Gems' right-angle weave tutorial picks up four and passes through the first again; Beadaholique's says the same two-bead exit in its own words — "so you exit directly across from the first bead."
3. The next unit of row 1: pick up 3. Go back through the bead the thread came out of — the two units now share it — then on through two of the new beads, landing opposite the shared one again. The thread rounds one unit one way and the next unit the other way: the figure eight. Fire Mountain Gems names it: "your thread will be moving in a figure eight pattern."
4. Pull the ring snug before the next unit — the app's first tip. The square only stays square when its side is pulled taut this turn.

The rows: 3 to start, 2 after, always

1. Start row 2 where row 1 ended. Go round the last unit until the thread comes out of its bottom bead. That bead is where the row below hangs from — Beadaholique puts it as "pass back through the last unit until you exit the side bead where the second row begins."
2. Pick up 3 and go back through that bead. The new unit hangs below it and shares it, making a square under the square. Then go on round the new unit to come out of its far side, ready for the next.
3. Every unit after takes only 2 new beads. It shares its top bead with the row above and a side bead with the unit before it. Pass through both shared beads so the four make a ring, snug it, and the row walks itself.
4. Each row runs back the other way. Every row starts at the end where the last one finished, so the pattern rows turn back on themselves and the thread never trails across the work — the app draws an arrow on every row of Make.
5. Every side takes a bead. A unit with an empty side has no way to catch the next unit, so gaps in the chart get flagged before you start — the app warns on the first unit and on each unit with a gap, the same "fill it in Design" rule the grid stitches share.

When it goes wrong

The bead math, on the app's starters

Plain arithmetic on the app's starter counts — every chart cell holds a bead except the never-used last cell of each lying row — with the shopping list's 10% spare (advanced mode offers 0, 10 or 20%), the app's per-gram figures — 11/0 rounds count out at 110 to the gram, 8/0s at 39 — and the shop's real tubes (8.5 g for Miyuki 11/0s, 22 g for 8/0s):

Thread, on the same arithmetic: the app estimates the bracelet at about 3.1 m (3.4 yd) — the thread rounds every unit and re-passes each bead two or three times, plus 60 cm to finish — labelled a rough estimate on the Supplies screen. For perspective, that's less thread than square stitch asks for the same-sized chart, and more than peyote: RAW borrows most of its beads, but it charges rent in passes. Shopping notes worth taking to the store: galvanized finishes can rub off with wear and dyed colors can fade in sun or water — Duracoat and PermaFinish are made to last — and the shopping list raises a line when it sees either. The shopping-list builder runs this math in the browser, and the app's Supplies tab works it off your RAW chart, repeats and shared rows included.

And what the method doesn't cover, honestly: cubic and prismatic RAW, the two-needle version, tubes, and units with more than one bead to a side — the app charts flat, one-bead RAW only. Wikipedia and Beadaholique describe the rest; the square-of-four here is the corner they all turn from.