Focusing on Finishing

I'm in a beadweaving frame of mind. Now that I've finished Mikkey's amulet bag, I feel quite free to work on some inspirational pieces. My time is spent in the studio, wearing my work station close-up glasses and under the magnifier as I peer at tiny seed beads. The first piece finished last week was this necklace based on the one featured on the cover of the February 2009 issue of Bead & Button Magazine and designed by Marcia DeCoster:

This was a great instructional project. I learned a new way to do decreasing flat peyote stitch, as well as Ndebele (en-DEB-el-AH), or tubular herringbone, stitch. I've also been itching to practice encasing focal beads with peyote stitch bezels. This one turned out to be a beauty.

The central stone is agatized fossil coral, surrounded with cafe au lait-colored faux pearls and keishi pearls. The drop is peach-colored cubic zirconium. I'm very pleased with the final result. The beads were stitched down to a peyote stitch base, which made a nice, elegant finish.

The necklace rope called for twisted Ndebele.

The final product looks like individual strands of seed beads that were twisted before wearing, but the pattern is woven into a permanently twisted design. The wearer never has to think about pre-twisting before donning the necklace. Sweet! The connecting loops were made with straight Ndebele. The finishing touch is a sterling silver box clasp with a purple glass cabachon.

There was a lot to learn, and lots of practice with each component of the piece. There was also a lot of undoing mistakes!

This is going into my personal collection.

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The other piece I finished was my own design.

A spectacular moukite oval bead is the focal point, with a deep, rusty red background and ribbons of yellow, cream, gray, and lavender running through it. The stone is surrounded by a seed bead bezel embellished with micro-faceted sunstone rondelles and keishi pearls. The beads are stitched to a soft, eggplant purple Ultrasuede background fabric - something else I've been wanting to learn for a very long time.

The rope from which the pendant hangs was woven with the twisted Ndebele stitch. The rope colors are a deep cherry red accented with a line of metallic beads ranging from deep gold to purple. The ends of the necklace are embellished with hand stitched beaded bead caps, moukite round beads, and Czech fire-polished crystal beads.

Those beaded bead caps were F - U - N, fun!

Purchasing information for this piece can be found here.