Work, or Fun... Why Not Both?

When I was growing up, adults would groan and talk about work as a grueling thing to be endured for 8 hours a day. Work was work, then they'd come home and play. I feel lucky to have work and fun... at the same time! Especially these past two months, when I have the time, patience, and supplies at the ready to learn new techniques.

This week's endeavor: bead embroidery. Hot damn... This is seriously fun. I've had this book for about 6 months now.

I take it off the shelf periodically to swoon over the color pictures, but haven't had the time to do something with it until now. Last weekend, as I passed the bookshelf in my studio, there was a pulsing soft yellow glow emanating from the binding of the book, and an electric harmonic in the air, a bit like a wet finger running around the top of a wine glass. I pulled the book down, and it opened on its own to a necklace page. I thought, "why not?" I have a new charoite (SHAR-oh-ITE) oval focal bead from my favorite store and I'd been thinking hard on how to use it.

A beautiful mineral, fairly new to the bead market, charoite comes from Russia. It has layers of color running through it ranging from lavender, pink, brown, and black. Gorgeous!

I anchored the focal bead down, and flanked it with a couple of muscovite ovals for interest. Very pretty!

My original plan was to make a sort of beaded bib which would hang from bead strands. I didn't want to be too ambitious for a first project, but the thing is growing as I work. You can see from the black lines how the design is changing from stage to stage.

Once I had the stones in place, I needed to start filling in the spaces between them with more beads and patterns.

This morning, I changed my mind... again. I decided to go full-hog and make the piece a fully embroidered collar. So, I needed to add some more of the foundation ultra-suede, which will be reinforced in the beading and final construction phase. It'll be just as strong as if it was one piece of cloth.

So far, the piece has taken me 15 hours to get to the stage in the above photo - that's counting all the time to sew stuff down and then take it off again when I don't like it. I think it will probably take me a couple of weeks to finish it. So stay tuned...