Embroidery from Game of Thrones

Okay, I have not been doing much for the last month except torturing myself trying to take sharp pictures of resin pendants with the only camera I own, a slim little digital point-and-shoot. This setting, that setting, outside, inside, downstairs, upstairs, in my lady's chamber...

Sorry, got a little carried away there. I've got a couple of friends who understand photography and I've begged them for help, but it's difficult because they speak Photography. I'd understand them better if they spoke Swahili and that's not a figure of speech, it's the literal truth. Anyway, looks as if a slightly more sophisticated camera may be in my future.

The last few days I've been thinking that I don't want to make any more resin pendants if I can't find some way to photograph and sell them, and isn't it about time to get back to playing with fiber, maybe a small embroidery....Then a friend sent me a link to Michele Carragher's website. and there went the afternoon, drooling over her incredibly rich work - and yes, she does the embroidery for Game of Thrones. Now I want to encourage everyone I know to waste their own time looking at all the pictures on this incredible website. By the way, the home page has a link to a page called "How I Create an Embroidery." Don't miss it. And be sure to scroll down until you get to the jeweled bugs.

Crabby with shells on

A friend came over for dinner last night wearing a shirt with this beautiful crab embroidery on it...that was falling off because the manufacturer had only fused it on. The poor guy had lost portions of two limbs already and it looked like the rest of him would not survive the next wash. So I made her go home in one of my old shirts and did a quick rescue-stitch all around the crab. What to do about the missing bits? These shell-shaped sequins would cover them, and if I put a few extra shells on perhaps it would look like they were all part of the design, not patches. Then I started eyeing some lavender AB seed beads, but my Voice of Reason said, "Joanne would probably like her shirt back some time next year, and you haven't finished stitching the binding on that crib quilt yet and #1 Daughter, aka The Organizer, is 39 weeks pregnant." That Voice of Reason is a real party pooper sometimes.

Lacy Looped Fringe Instructions

Loop-ended fringe

Just as with spikes, you can end a spike fringe stitch with a loop instead of with a big bead and a pivot bead or any of the other variations we’ve already discussed. All by itself, I have to say this doesn’t make a terribly exciting fringe.



It should be obvious from the diagram how you do it: string on enough beads for the desired length of fringe, then string on enough more to make a graceful loop (the 7 pictured are a minimum; I actually like my loops with 8-10 beads) and then go back up the first lot of beads you strung. (Again, probably more than 5. Think 10, 15 beads at a minimum if you want a gracefully swaying fringe.)

Where looped fringes really come into their own is when you start adding loops before you get to the end, like this:



It does make a difference which way your thread runs, so bear with me while I dissect this one in a little more detail:

String on 4 beads. Now string on 7 more beads and go through the 4th bead again, in the same direction as before. (If you keep stringing in the same direction as before your loops will dangle gracefully. If you string back into the base fringe in the opposite direction then your loops will stick out. You could think of them as perky and individualistic, but I find the effect is more like that of a person with very curly hair on an extremely bad hair day.)

And that’s about it, really. String on 4 more beads, then do another 7-bead loop maintaining the direction of stringing, keep on this way until your fringe is long enough, then close it off with one last loop and run the needle back up through all the main fringe beads but without passing back through any of the loop beads.

Massed together, these multi-loop fringes can give a beautifully rich and lacy look. I used them to decorate the strap and half the beading on Crazy Lace Cascade. The original crazy lace agate stone had bands of even color on one side and a wild tumble of pale peach and pearl curls on the other side; I tried to duplicate that effect in the beading, with fringes falling over the stone as well as around it. (see previous post for a picture, or go to my website for a really detailed picture.

Chihuly Form Out of Progress

Well, you can't really call it "in progress" when you've packed up the materials in a plastic shoebox to get them out of the way for other projects, can you? I hope to get back to that necklace before it becomes another UFO - but I did design it rather on the grand scale; peyote ruffles are one thing, but sculptural peyote ruffles are...a lot of seed beads. And before all that there was, conservatively, sixteen miles of bead embroidery, all backstitch, no oddments added for variety, all in the interests of creating a smooth base before the necklace shape breaks into waves, which it's just beginning to do and I have seen enough green beads for a while.

So it's back to small projects like this abstract angel, which I'm calling "Winter Light" - very restrained for me, nothing but kyanite and transparent rainbow beads and a small fortune's worth of rainbow Swarovski cubes. I really wanted to showcase the chatoyance of the kyanite rather than showing off my fancy bead embroidery here.

Now I'm ready to cast aside all restraint and make something as frothy as Chantilly lace. Watch this space!

Beaded Forest

All the inspiring photos from Santa Fe are in my head, alas; I spent a LOT of time in art galleries, trying to absorb the essence of pieces we can't possibly afford to buy. (Basic paradigm here being, if it's shown in a Santa Fe gallery, we can't afford it).


I've been beading and finishing pieces like crazy, though. This one I'm calling In the Forest of Myth - rather a pretentious name for a pendant that fits in the palm of my hand, but that's what I was thinking about while beading the piece; deep forests with branching tree trunks lost in foliage, with spirit faces and birds with Messages - it all started with the cabochon, which makes me think of deep green pools in among brown and golden trees.

You can do a lot of thinking while beading even a small piece.

Twisted Ribbon Stitch

Twisted Ribbon Stitch

Today I actually feel intelligent enough to take a small excerpt from the new book. I'm quite pleased with this stitch and hope anybody who's interested will be able to follow this slightly abbreviated description.

The twisted ribbon stitch, worked with joined spikes, takes advantage of the fact that they are joined at the top to force the line of beads from vertical to flat and back to vertical. You can do it with seed beads only, but it’s absolutely eye-popping worked with bugles, so that’s how I’m going to show it.

First stitch: bring needle up at A, thread (sb, bb, sb) and bring needle down at B. Because this stitch strains the thread against the bead edges at top and bottom, it’s important to buffer your bugle beads with at least one seed bead at each end.

(Huh? That’s not a spike. It’s lying down flat against the fabric. Has she gone out of her mind or what?
Just wait for the next few stitches, ok?)

Bring your needle and thread around under the fabric and come up again at A. Go back through the first (sb, bb, sb) but this time do not bring the needle down through the fabric. Instead, string on another (sb, bb, sb).



Now bring your needle down at C, take a tiny stitch, and bring needle and thread up just beside C.



I think you can see where we’re going here. You keep making those joined spike stitches, without going back through the fabric at the top, and as the line of spikes gets longer it will gradually become more and more free of the fabric until eventually the spikes can stand upright. It’ll probably take about 10 to 15 spikes to reach this point. When you do, if you push the last spike upright with your thumb, you’ll see the line of spikes making a beautiful curve.

Obviously, once you let go of the last spike, the beads will just flop down on the fabric and your beautiful 3-dimensional curve will be lost. So what you want to do now is to anchor it somehow, and you do that by working another 10-15 spikes and stitching through the last one to anchor it to the fabric in the opposite direction. Now you’ve made one “twist” of the “ribbon.”



If you really want to get fancy, you could try changing colors at the midpoint of each twist, implying that you’re twisting a ribbon with different colors on each side.

Incestuous backgrounds

Last night, inspired by Vernon's digital work, I was playing around in Photoshop with one of my pictures of the raku/green necklace (now "officially" named "Sea Forests." The Twirl filter combined with a bit of Liquidize around the edges and some layering, flipping, and blending of the image produced this image, which looks vaguely dragon-like to me. I'm thinking about printing it out and emphasizing the dragon-ness of the form with judiciously placed beads and embroidery. It does seem kind of weird to me, to take a snapshot of my own art and squoodge it around and use it as the basis for another piece. I wonder how long I could keep recycling like this? If I do bead the dragon, can I photograph and Photoshop it and come up with a quilt design? The challenge appeals to me.

Of course, first there's the challenge of using my extremely rudimentary drawing skills to move from this swirly shape to a recognizable dragon. Hmm, where did I put that book on how to draw dragons? I'm going to have to do something about wings...

Backgrounds for beadwork?

My talented friend Vernon Sims has been playing with a fractal program and sent me these two images, which he thinks might make good backgrounds for beadwork. I don't know - the red one in particular is so rich that I might print it out and just sit there staring at it and salivating. It almost seems criminal to cover part of it with beads. What I'm wondering is whether beads could enhance it at all.

Crocheted Coral Reef

A member of our local fiberarts group discovered this glorious construction, which is now traveling around the country. Alas, right now it's on exhibit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That's a fair distance from Texas; I'll watch, and wait, and pray it comes somewhere closer.

For some time I've been harboring a fantasy about making a beaded coral reef on a base of handmade felt, but so far it hasn't got much past a fantasy - every time I finish a beadwork project I start a new one on Ultrasuede. I really need to slow down, collect my fibers and make the felt.