Necklaces, Necklaces, Necklaces!

I've made several necklaces over the last couple of months, but I haven't had time to blog about them until now.

A charm necklace:

Michaels had an adorable set of alphabet charms, and I used my sons' initials for this. I interspersed them with colorful cane glass beads. But what to do with the other 23 letters ...

A silver necklace:

I cannibalized two old necklaces I never wore any more to make this one. I like it, and it has a nice weight, but I want to make another, plainer one using Hill Tribe silver; I'm just not sure if I have enough of those beads.

A vintage necklace:

I had two bracelets (one with three-strands) made with vintage plastic beads that fell apart. Since the bracelets were a little too chunky for me, I opted to mix the beads all up into a necklace. It's not really my style though, so I may sell it, if I get around to setting up a Ko-fi site (etsy has become increasingly seller-unfriendly).

A pretty necklace:

This took some time to come together; I had stacked the buttons together quite some time ago, but I didn't know what to do with them (using wire to make a pendant didn't work). Much later I bought some pendant trays, and the buttons seemed like a good fit for one of them; all that I needed to do to make the fit perfect was add a perimeter of teeny seed beads -- which took another two years to actually do. Then I finally came up with a strand, using the leftover "pearl" beads from a necklace that belonged to my grandmother.

I is an Icy White

 Remember my synesthete alphabet? I decided long ago I wanted to bead the letter I out of white beads, maybe crystals, but I wasn't sure what technique would be best. Enter Marcia DeCoster's "love letters," a perfect match for what I wanted. It uses cubic right angle weave which I had never done before, but it was easy to pick up (especially for such a small project); also easy was turning Marcia's L into an I:

As you can see, I made two Is; the first was with size 11 seed beads, but it was too small to fit the 2 x 3 inch size of my ATCs, so I made a second with size 8 beads. The background is peyote stitch using silver-lined beads from a long-ago Martha Stewart kit. I'm not sure how this will look after the beads tarnish with exposure to the air, but if it ends up looking terrible I can always reattach the I to a new backing.

What letter should I do next?

E is for Easter

Not that this project actually has anything to do with the holiday. I've mentioned before that letters have distinctive colors in my head, and I've been working on a series off and on. E is light blue:

The blue calico fabric has sentimental meaning for me, as it is from my mother's stash and dates back to at least the 80s. The background is two different remnants of silk, and I added a bit of lace for contrast. The card is backed with light blue linen.

For those who are wondering, D is green, but I haven't decided yet how I want to represent it.

Daisychain ABC

Finished!

Actually, I finished the stitching quite a while ago, but it took me ages to find a good frame.The framing process itself was easy, and came out pretty well if I do say so myself. Alicia's framing tutorial was quite helpful.

Its spot on the mantle is temporary, but maybe not -- Beadboy3 is enamored of it and loves to call out the letters, and I don't have the heart to move it somewhere where he won't be able to see it easily.

A is for Assisi Embroidery

For the third letter in my alphabet series, I used my take on Assisi embroidery.

A is a mauvy-pinky-purply color, like a henley shirt I had as a teenager.  That shirt is long gone, but I have a beach towel that's almost the same shade.  I cut out a 2 by 3 inch rectangle from the edge and zigzagged the edges a couple of times, with a variegated quilting thread.

I also stay-stitched the cut-out, so the towel wouldn't unravel.

I then sketched out an A in a blue wash-out marker and started stitching:

Traditionally, in Assisi embroidery the motif is outlined with a back stitch or Holbein stitch, and the background is filled in with cross stitch, but why be traditional?  I used seed and straight stitches to fill in the background, using Caron Collections' Watercolours and Wildflowers threads in African Sunset (so pretty).

A close up:

Fuzzy Q

To add to the wall:

It's just a wooden Q wrapped with purple yarn.

I've been in a crafting (and everything-else) slump the past few weeks.  It turns out a Beadboy3 will be joining us in November, and mild-but-constant pregnancy crappiness and a humid summer do not mix.

But I'm sure once the little guy shows up, I'll have plenty of time and energy to make stuff!

Time to Work on this Again

Since a lack of proper supplies is keeping me from finishing my more recent projects.

The T is in long and short stitch; rather than have the stitches share holes, giving the bricky look of K, I split each previous stitch.  The U is in fly stitch; I don't think I've seen this stitch stacked so densely before.

C is for Craft

I forgot all about this!

The next in my alphabet series, C is a golden yellow in my mind, kind of like marigold.  I found some pretty beads and velvet, and adapted the letter from Designer Bead Embroidery:

Someday maybe I'll actually have a decent banner for my blog.

Hallow Sampler

It came out quite nicely, if I do say so myself.  Tiny stitching aside, the design worked up quickly and easily.

I kept the hoop as a frame; to finish it quickly (and rather messily, shhh!), I just cut off the excess fabric (leaving behind a border of a few inches) and sewed a running stitch along the perimeter, which I then gathered and tied off:

 I like the design so much, I'm tempted to pick up another one of the samplers.

Minding My P and Q

I keep going back and forth on the light red.  Sometimes it looks soft and pretty, sometimes garish and tacky. 

Brought to You by the Letter Q

The idea of a "letter wall" has been floating around the internet for a while (and apparently I'm not the first to think of this title).  I wanted to keep it to one letter and get variety via colors, textures, and materials, but what letter?  Most people seem to use their family initial, but Mr. Beadgirl and I have different last names.  Using my first initial seemed solipsistic, so I picked Q, which is a pretty albeit useless letter.  Q Q Q Q Q Q Q.  Aren't they curly and elegant?

My latest Q was inspired by the 3 Rs Blog via pinterest,  who covered a Z with lots of bottlecaps and even wrapped the edges around the letter.  I didn't go through nearly as much work as she did, especially since I had a minion.  We made a good team -- I used pliers to turn up the fluted edges, then passed them to Beadboy2 who gleefully smashed them flat with a rubber mallet.  E-6000 glue seems to be successfully holding them in place:

My button Q:

 

 Hot glue is not all it's cracked up to be; periodically a button falls off and I have to glue it back on.

Glitter Q:

Let's not discuss how many coats I had to do because I am glitter-impaired.

Fabric Q from Anthropologie:

As Beadmom says, odd is better than even, so I better get cracking on another Q.

The Good Thing About Liturgical Calendars

is that they give you more time to finish projects.  It's still the Easter season, technically, so it's ok that I only now just finished the bunnies I've been stitching:

The patterns are from the "Bunny Collection" by JBW Designs, which was oddly insistent that they be used as baby gifts.

I'm not sure how I will finish them -- perhaps make each into an oval ornament and link them together with ribbon.

B Is for Book

And for Birds, as in killing two of them with one stone.  I've been meaning to create some sort of banner for this site, and I thought I'd find different crafty ways to spell out the title.

I've also been wanting to start an alphabet series.  While I hesitate to call myself a synesthete, all my life letters have had a color in my mind (so do numbers, something I didn't even realize until recently).  Not all the letters have a really strong color, and in some cases the meaning of the word can change the color a bit, but yeah -- B has always been reddish-orange, like the Bittersweet Crayola marker I had as a teen.

So combining these two projects was pretty obvious.  The B I printed up and oh-so-carefully-but-not-very-smoothly cut out.  I glued it onto a pretty floral segment from a card I received ages ago (I knew I was saving it for a good reason!) and then sandwiched the whole thing between two panes of glass;  soldering sealed it up.  It's only the second thing I've ever soldered, and you can tell.  But I am very grateful to Simple Soldered Jewelry and Accessories, which taught me an alternative to a "beaded" soldered look -- a thick, rounded edge of solder rather than a flat painted edge -- which I had a hard time with on my first soldering project.

On-Going

The latest on the ABC Sampler:



The latest quilting project:

Ooh, Just Ki . . .

Eh, I got nothing.

The latest on the Daisy Chain ABCs sampler:
As per Alicia's instructions, the long-and-short stitch I used for K had me needle going into the same holes as the stitches before, rather than into the previous stitches themselves (like split stitch), which resulted in a cool, brick-like effect. I could not bear to do more satin stitch, especially on a curve, so I did the O with two layers of blanket stitch.

Definitely Elegant

The design over all, that is. My D is not elegant, because I apparently was a little shaky when I traced it, so the lines are crooked and those shapes in the center of each side can only be called polygons, not diamonds. Plus the white thread was not great at covering all of my shaky purple permanent marks (I wish I'd known about Pretty By Hand's tip of marking the spot for a detatched chain stitch with just two dots, for the top and bottom). Once I finish the rest of the sampler I should tear out the D's stitches and redo it, perhaps . . . ah, who am I kidding? That D isn't changing.

The E came out nicely, however, which is surprising given how much I hate satin stitch. I used the weave of the linen to keep the stitches spaced evenly, so perhaps that's the secret.

Not ForGotten

Be Crewel

Har Har. I finished the next two letters:
B, done in stem stitch:
To finish the B I'm supposed to add three interior rows of stem stitch in the lighter red, but I like the way this looks so much, especially between the yellow and turquoise, that I'm leaving it this way for now.

C, done with threaded backstitch, backstitch, satin stitch, detached daisy stitch, straight stitch, and french knots:
I used just one strand of the wool when lacing the back stitch of the C, which gave it a, well, lacier look. I love this stitch, and I must use it more often. Satin stitch, on the other hand, is my mortal enemy, which is why the leaves don't look great.

Fabric Hunting Was Much Easier

My original plan was to pick a light purply-blue fabric, which I thought would contrast nicely with the leafy greens and teal I was intending to use. However, because I had to buy new threads, I couldn't quite get the shades I was envisioning. So I went through my fabric stash, looking for a good neutral. White and off-white were out, because I wanted the white thread to stand out. Blues and purples were out, as I explained above. Posie gets Cozy used a brownish olive fabric in her kit, and I thought of using something similar, but it wouldn't work with the threads I chose -- plus, I wanted to make mine a little different. I finally settled on a greyish-pink linen, remnant of a skirt I wore for years until the waistband finally stretched out too far to fix. (I used another piece of this fabric for my Bear Footprints embroidery). I think (hope) this will work nicely with the reds and greens.

I traced the design with a permanent pen, a fine-point Sharpie, as per Posie's instructions, which was horribly nerve-wracking. And then, finally, I could start sewing:

Thread Hunting

I bought Posy Gets Cozy's DaisyChain ABCs pattern a while back -- just the pattern, partly because I wanted to change some of the colors and partly to use up the fabric and wool I already have, saving money. And then I promptly forgot about it, until Lisa reminded me by stitching hers.

So I decided this week to pick out the threads. I have a big jar of wool yarn for needlepoint, with all the colors I wanted for the pattern:
Unfortunately, the pattern calls for crewel wool, which is just a little thinner than standard tapestry wool. I have lots of crewel wool, too, but with a few exceptions the colors are much more muted and old-timey:
I did a little sampler embroidery of the Q from the pattern, to see if I could get away with using the tapestry wool, but it really did make a difference. As you can see, the daisy flowers at the top are significantly larger, even though the threads look almost the same width:
So I spent my lunch hour on Thursday calling all the needlepoint stores in Manhattan (oddly, clustered on the Upper East Side). After work I trudged uptown in the heat wave on the dreaded 6 line to the one store claiming to carry crewel wool, bringing some of the brighter shades of wool I had (I was determined to use at least some of my colors too). Unfortunately, their wool (a brand I had never heard of) was thinner than standard crewel wool -- so thin I'd need two strands to do the embroidery. Which was not a problem, except that mixing in the wool I had would ruin the uniformity. Given that the skeins were pretty cheap, I gave up and bought all seven colors I needed.
The colors are pretty. The pattern calls for nine colors, but two of them are gray and peach, which I don't like at all, and they are only used for the M, so I've omitted them. I'm using the two cherry colors instead of pinks, the green shades are closer together, and the turquoise replaces the light blue, another color I am not crazy about.

The next step is picking the fabric, and dammit, it's coming from my stash.