Collaborative Beading

Each year, for the past few years, the Bead Society of Victoria has made necklaces of beaded beads as a group project. We do this in Winter, at what we call our 'Busy Beads Weekend'. Every person that comes along makes a bead, then does what they feel like for the rest of the day. We buy rolls and cakes, and several members make soup for lunch. It's a lovely weekend! The beaded beads get assembled into necklaces which are then raffled off. The subsequent funds are used to fund members' community service projects.

This year, one concept for a necklace was actually bead embroidery and cabochons. Several people did either simple or embellished bead embroidery around a series of cabochons. I was then given the job of assembling them into a necklace. This was actually a lot harder than it sounds! The cabs were multiple sizes, multiple shapes, and two different colours. Many of them were regular ovals, but there were some irregular focal cabs. Simply arranging them all into a pleasing design was incredibly difficult.

I ended up using my phone to photograph a series of options, which I then sent to our workshop coordinator, LW. LW then came down to my place and we came up with a completely different idea altogether!

These photos are a bit rough because they are working photos, but they show how I tried a variety of ways to arrange the cabochons. Something I have learnt from working with multiple focals is that there are many different ways to arrange them, and it's worth while to take the time to explore a variety of options.

From memory I left the cabs on the beading mat for a couple of days and played around with them, taking a photo each time.

One of the hardest things to figure out this way is how the eventual necklace would actually 'drape' on the wearer. I really would have liked to have had a dressmaker's dummy when doing this, to pin the various pieces to. You could also temporarily stitch them together just with big tacking stitches I suppose.

Anyway, LW and I came up with a design that we were both happy with, and I got to work. All of these cabochons had been beaded by different people, and this meant that the stitching, particularly the edging, varied somewhat from cab to cab. This presented an interesting challenge - it meant that I had to work out different ways to join each set of cabs to suit the edging used.

I also had to play around with options for filling in the spaces between the focal cabs at the front. I used fire polished beads and seed beads and made joins that look a little like webs but are really netting. I think they came up really well, and helped to make the central point more cohesive.

The final piece is above, and a full-sized photo is on the BSV's web-site, or it can also be found on my Pinterest board. The photo is a bit skewed - there is a central line from the top of the central black cab to the bottom of the central triangular cab - when worn, that is the centre point of the necklace.

Lessons learnt: I learnt a lot about joining multiple pieces into one necklace. There's a real art to arranging all of the pieces so that they work together and sit well on the neck. I feel much more confident about trying my hand at making a bead embroidery piece with multiple components now. In fact I have one piece partly done (my Steampunk piece) that stalled partly because I wasn't confident with how to join everything together. Hopefully I will be able to get back to that now.

The raffle has been held and this piece is going to a lady in central Victoria. I sincerely hope she gets a lot of pleasure from wearing this necklace - I certainly enjoyed being involved in making it!

Bonus: I also ended up making a matching cuff - this was a prize for the person that sold the winning raffle ticket. This was actually my first bead embroidered cuff over a brass blank. I was really pleased with how this turned out, although it would have been much easier to start with a 'raw' cab - I used one of the leftover bead-embroidered cabs from the necklace, so it sits quite proud of the surrounding beadwork. Nevertheless, it looks great, and I'm really keen to try one for myself now!

When I'm not beading ...

It's funny how you get into the habit of doing certain things in certain ways. For example, I can't do beadwork while sitting and watching television. It's just something about the location of the beads, the angle I'm sitting at ... I don't know. I have to be sitting at a table to do beading. One of my friends only ever beads when sitting in her recliner chair - we are all different!

Anyway, just because I can't do beading while I watch telly, doesn't mean I can't do anything. I can still embroider and crochet. I actually didn't do any embroidery for ages because I couldn't see well, but now I have my Craft Optic glasses and a fantastic new daylight lamp, I'm back in business.

I started work on a blackwork sampler in my embroidery class back in 2010 (http://www.crafteecottage.com.au/). I have been working on it sporadically ever since. I enjoy doing blackwork, but I did find some of the patterns very tedious to do, especially the large sections. I also struggled with doing this at night when I was tired before I got my craft optic glasses. Anyway, around Easter-time this year, I decided to really make a push to get this finished at last. It took a lot of work, but it was done by late July 2013 (3.5 years). There would be close to 400 hours of work in this, which includes quite a bit of pulling out and re-doing unfortunately. I got hung up on a couple of sections I didn't like and couldn't figure out what to do with - almost like writer's block! One night I sat down with a seam ripper and spent about three hours pulling out one section of stitching - I whinged to myself the whole time, but I felt so much better for having admitted that it needed to go!

This is the first sampler I have ever done and I can see a lot of faults in it, even though I am very proud of it. I want to do another one (yes I am a glutton for punishment), because I learned so much from this one and I would like to see how much better I can do.

I will have to get someone to take a decent photo of the sampler, these are terrible! But they give you an idea of what it looks like.

Lessons learnt:
Choose your main patterns at the start of the process and work out their repeat number of stitches, then plan your sampler around that. It's a minor niggle, but it does annoy me that the two lattice patterns don't go to the edge of the sampler.

Plan your layout, even a little bit, before you start. This sampler was very ad hoc - when I got bored with one section I would move on down to another section. So some of the stitches are not complementary to others, some should have have had wider or narrower bands. I left a blank section below the half-done alphabet and moved on to the next pattern, then had a lot of trouble finding a pattern that would fit in the space I left. I should have chosen a stitch and worked even a little bit, before moving on down.

Finally, if you're doing an alphabet, work out your spacing before you start. I didn't even try, I just copied the alphabet and spacings directly from the printed chart. That's fairly standard practice, I know. However, if I had been less lazy, I could have centred the alphabet so that there wasn't such a big gap at the end, which would have looked better in the long run.

Lots of lessons - the last one is: chip away at a big project and don't get discouraged. Don't feel bad for putting it away for a while, but do persevere. If you keep on with it, you will eventually finish! Maybe I should pull out that old Teresa Wentzler cross-stitch and have a go at that again?

Twin Bead Herringbone Bracelet

I like the new two-hole beads which have been coming out over the past year or so. Any excuse to try something different!
Herringbone is one of my favourite stitches, and I found a pattern for a mixed twin bead/seed bead herringbone on Patty Perline's blog here: http://pattyperline.blogspot.it/2013/06/superduo-herringbone-texture.html

Once you get past the first couple of rows, it's a very easy pattern to work with. My only suggestion would be to pick up two seed beads in the first row (ie one two-hole, two seed beads ...), but only stitch through the second of the seed beads in the next row. Without doing that, you get very loose tension in the first row, or a lot of thread showing. The second seed bead takes up the slack and the start row looks much better. When you get to the other end, do the same thing in reverse.

Here the bracelet I made using this technique. I have used alternating shiny and matte metallic purple two hole beads, with silvery-grey seed beads. The alternating matte and shiny produces a really interesting effect and gives an extra texture to the weave. This beadwork is very supple, almost as soft as fabric, and very comfortable to wear. I would possibly make it one or two rows shorter if I had a do-over, but that's a minor quibble. One more UFO finished!

Thank you Patty Perline!

It seems to be a while since I posted a blog entry. There's been too much going on with work! Also, I have been reluctant to post any of the pieces I have made for the Johnston Collection exhibition, as I want them to be 'unveiled' there. I am very happy with the way things are going though! I have been able to try out a few new tricks and see how they look.

This piece is one I made about four years ago. I bought the two cabs at the Bead and Button Show from Earthenwood studio [http://www.earthenwoodstudio.com/]. I also bought all of the seed beads at the Show - they were all colours that were unobtainable in Australia at the time, so I was very keen to use them. The cabochon is edged with a double 'ruffle' of picots which include magatamas - my own invention and I still think it looks great. Magatamas are under-rated in my view, they should be used more.

The main thing I initially learnt from making this piece was the variations that can be achieved with herringbone stitch. I used alternating magatamas and size 11o seed beads - a trick I picked up from Laura McCabe [http://www.justletmebead.com/] at the Show. The technique gives you a fantastically textured rope. Also the edging - you can achieve lots of different effects depending on the beads you use.

I subsequently learnt a lot about coated beads and why you shouldn't use them with a bailed pendant! The finish has actually been rubbed off many of the beads in the rope around where the bail generally sits - the friction between the two sets of beads has done this. Some of the beads in the bail have lost their coating too. I was still fairly new to specialty coatings at that stage, and really had no idea that this would happen. If I had a do-over, I would still use the same beads, but I would fix the bail in position, or design the necklace without a bail, so that there was no risk of rubbing. In fact the last few projects I have done, I have done exactly that.

A friend loaned me some rub-on gold embellishing paint, which I tried out, and it has covered the beads which lost their coating, so they aren't so obvious. It will be interesting to see how long the paint lasts. I expect that in the end, I will have to pull the rope apart and re-do it, which is a pain, but I have always liked the necklace so I'd like to salvage it if I can.

So there's the lesson from this piece - don't use beads with fragile coatings in locations where they will suffer a lot of rubbing. The manufacturers aren't joking when they say that the coatings will come off!

Tubular beadwork tutorial (Chenille Stitch): a simple idea for a tubular...

I have tried the plain chenille stitch and really like it - this multi-colour version is interesting too.
The video is by Sara Spoltore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7T5RSYp3q8

The Johnston Collection - update - the first lot of kits have gone out

It's amazing how complicated it actually is to manage a project of this size. Planning and making enough Christmas ornaments to cover a Christmas tree, plus sundry other items, is actually a lot of work!

We have planned a series of projects as follows:

• 3d Peyote stitch ornaments (range from beginner to advanced)
• Netted baubles (some easy, some difficult)
• Snowflakes and stars (all mostly easy)
• Bead-embroidered ornaments using cabochons based on miniatures in the Collection.

Peyote Stitch Ornaments

I purchased several patterns for these ornaments. The next step was to spreadsheet out how many beads would be needed for each kit. My aim has been for each ornament to be at least slightly different to any others made with the same pattern, so that each person has their own unique ornament. Actually working out colour-ways for the ornaments was surprisingly difficult, even though I had a limited colour range to work with. I sincerely hope everyone is happy with the results! The quantities had to be worked out down the number of grams for each seed bead colour and the number of crystals etc that were required. The beads were then ordered in by Cranberry Beads [http://www.cranberry.net.au/] for us. Jo spent a lot of time sourcing the beads at the best prices for us and I am exceedingly grateful, we couldn't have done this without her help.

The first set of about twelve kits of these has gone out. Thanks to a major sale on delica beads at Spotlight, I have enough beads to kit up several more of these ornaments, which I will do soon.

These pictures show the colours we are using for the ornaments: matte black, matte off-white (light cream?), rich red and dark gold. We would have liked to use a brighter gold, but matte gold beads cost a fortune! So I chose a darker gold, actually bronze, matte metallic, which is very striking, especially against the cream beads.

Netted/stitched baubles

I sometimes wonder why I refuse to take the easy route if I can find the more complicated way to do things! Yes we have patterns for easy netted baubles, but no, I didn't want to do those, I wanted to do some quite complicated patterns! Naturally, we couldn't find baubles of the right size to match the patterns (why don't they sell the same size baubles in Australia as in the USA?). Fortunately, we have a clever BSV member who is testing the bauble patterns and re-writing them to suit the size of the baubles we have. Once she has completed that, we will kit up all the beads that were set aside for baubles and then hand them out to members to make up the baubles.

Bead Embroidered Ornaments

I have just gotten started on these and have found that I am rotten at making cabochons. I will need to seek some help before going further with that, from someone who knows how to do it. I also want to go back to the museum and have another look at some of the Collection items to see if I can find anything I can use to inspire the bead embroidery around the cabochons.

We had a group meeting with all of the other arts and craft groups participating in this project yesterday at Baxter Hall. I was blown away by the creativity on display and the amount of work people have done on their contributions. I feel like so far most of what we've done has been counting, but now that we have embarked on the actual beading I'm sure progress will be made. This has been such an interesting project to work on and I have learnt a lot already about how to plan a group project and how to manage the set up for it - mostly of course by doing it badly and learning from my mistakes, but what's new there?

Here's a photo of the first order of seed beads for the peyote stitch ornaments:

And here's the first lot of bead kits, ready to go out to members:

I am really looking forward to seeing the completed ornaments and hearing what people think of them!

How to Attach Embellishments to a Focal Piece

This is an interesting idea for embellishing a cabochon. Presumably it would work with lots of different types of 'shapes'. Must try something like this!

An idea for using Preciosa Twin Beads

Here is an idea for using Preciosa Ornela twin seed beads. I haven't seen them used for bezelling before, but I suppose it makes sense that you could create rounded forms by varying the size of the seed beads in between the twin beads. I'm wondering now if you could do the same thing with a flat cabochon? Might be fun to experiment!