pointsetta

Hello, I'm going to have a go at coming back to blogging.  I still have lots to show you... lots of things that wonderful mum and I did together.  I want to thank you all for the lovely messages of support on my last post.  It's been tough adjusting to life without my best friend, my wonderful mum, but messages of support really do help to comfort in times like this.  I won't forget what you all did for me.

The last workshop at The Bead Shop Nottingham was before Christmas and was a poinsetta flower beadweaving project.

This project was HARD!  It is odd-count peyote which is confusing enough, without the fact that most rows are increase or decrease.  I struggled with this.  I managed to get 4 of the outer petals done in the class and did the fifth at home shortly after.  Since then I've attempted to do the inner petals at least 6 times and ended up cutting out each attempt.  You can't unpick odd-count peyote due to the complicated thread path.

Here is as far as I can get.  I wanted to show the completed flower, but I think this project has defeated me!  

I've found lots of mum's WIPs around her house (and I haven't even started investigating her craft stuff properly yet) and some of them I will finish in her honour.  I won't be finishing her poinsetta!

I won't be posting for the 3-weekly SAL tomorrow as I haven't touched my embroidery at all.  I will try to get back to it ready for the next update.

Needlecase

During the summer wonderful mum and I took a class at the Bead Shop Nottingham to make a needle case.  I've often admired beaded needle cases but I've never made one and I didn't understand how they work.  

It turns out they have a little wooden needle case inside them, like the one in the picture below.  This picture shows how far I got by the end of the class.

It was peyote stitched, so the technique wasn't difficult, but it was difficult following the pattern and remembering when to use the correct beads!  The pattern I followed was one made by Steph as I loved the design and colours.

A few weeks after the class I finally sat down to finish it - it only took about 20 minutes, more senseless procrastinating!  All I need to do now is glue the beadwork to the tube.  I have a stack of almost done projects waiting for some glue before I show you!

I've just realised I don't know how big this is.  About the length of a long beading needle?  Probably about 6cm/2 and a bit inches long.

This was a nice, simple, enjoyable project.

More pip beads

Following on from the pip bead class I took, I was inspired to use the 3 rivolis (sparkly bit in the centre, doesn't have a hole) I'd bought for more pip bead jewellery.  I knew I had some blue pip beads at home, so that was where I started.

I have load of blue seed beads so it was pretty easy to match these beautiful pips with some dark blue delicas and seed beads.  This one isn't going to be a brooch.

Instead I added a jump ring to the back so I can make it into a necklace.

I then made these little flowers.  6 of the pip beads fit perfectly together in a circle to form a bloom and I added a little clear seed bead in the centre of each.  I think I'll make a couple more of them and use them to flank the main flower.  

I'm afraid this isn't the last you'll see of pip bead flowers, I used all three rivolis...


I'd also like to say that I've had the most hectic couple of weeks at work, including working into the evening, so I haven't been visiting many blogs and I don't think I've commented on any.  I hope to catch up at some point soon, so don't think I've abandoned you!

Pip beads

Looking for my Grow Your Blog Post?

It's here.

Last Saturday saw the first bead class of the year at The Bead Shop Nottingham where me and my lovely mum took a class in using pip beads to bevel a rivoli.

The rivoli is the sparkling stone in the middle, it's a crystal one from Swarovski and for this project we used 10mm rivolis. The pip beads are the petal shaped beads around the outside.  We made the bezel with delicas, size 15/0s, size 11/0s and size 8/0s so there was a lot of bead choices to make before we could begin.

The ring was created with peyote stitch picking up various beads for each round, the whole tube was the tightened around the rivoli.  That was the hard part, it takes a lot of time, effort and patience to get the rivoli in place before pulling the rows tight!  The petals are deliberately wavy, I could have used size 9/0s in place of the 8/0s to make the petals lie flat, but I like the texture this creates.

I've finished it off with a brooch bar to wear on my cardigans.

I bought some more rivolis and I already had some different colours of pip beads.  I've been beading away already so expect to see some more of these coming up very soon!

I usually like to vary my posts and so wouldn't come back to beading for a couple of weeks, I also usually like to post every two days.  My mental health is not great right now and crafting is taking a back seat, so I'm going to be posting twice a week and expect quite a lot of beading.  Hopefully normal service will be resumed soon.

A Time to Stitch 6

I joined in A Time To Stitch 5, so jumped at the chance to join the next round.  The challenge was to create a piece of beadweaving following a chart.  If you're not sure what a beadweaving chart looks like, take a look at my Pinterest board here.  The charts on that board are for the peyote stitch and that's where I began, thinking it would be easy.

It wasn't.  The up and down nature of the stitch meant that I struggled to follow the chart!  You can find this particular free pattern here.  I made quite a few mistakes which had to be ripped out and it took me forever!  I stitched this using various size 11/0 seed beads.  It is supposed to be a bookmark but it's too short, has one raggedy edge and my attempt at a point was a massive failure!

I have collected a lot of free charts for cross stitch over the years (check out my Pinterest boards) and had always wanted to try one in beads.  I realised I'd have to learn how to do square stitch, but that was pretty easy.  I chose a pattern and got working.

The free chart is from Matryoshka Biscornue, though I can't find the actual chart now.  It's a great blog though, full of free small cross stitch charts. It turned out a lot taller and thinner than I was expecting, but I suppose that makes sense.  It's stitched using size 11/0 seed beads and the slight waviness at the edges is due to using 2 different brands of seed bead.  The white beads are Miyukis which are very regular in size and shape.  The blue were a cheaper brand and lots of different sizes and shapes.

My apologies for the dreadful photos.  I'm at the East Midlands Quilting Group of Moderners today and I only realised I hadn't taken photos on Friday morning which meant a quick photo shoot with my tablet and daylight lamp on an envelope before work, rather than with the camera in my lightbox in daylight!  What's that, you see no difference from my usual crappy photos?  Yeah, OK!

I really enjoyed this challenge.  I found out that following a Peyote chart is quite tricky but that you can use any of the millions of cross stitch charts out there to square stitch a piece.  I probably should have tried brick stitch.  It's like peyote stitch, but on its side, so I could have followed the chart a lot more easily.

If you'd like to see what the other participants in this challenge got up to, you can find them below.  

1-Therese Frank  (Host)    

2-Christine Altmiller  (Host)

3-Cynthia Machata

4-Samantha Wescott

5-Karin Slaton

6-Wendy - that's me!

7-Dagi (Kokopelli)

8-Lola

9-Paula

10-Karin G.

11-Becky Pancake

12-Ana Cravidao

13-Alenka

14-Debbie (Kepi)

15-Nelly May

16-LiliKrist

17-Sally Russick

18-Maryanne

19-Kim

20-Amy

A different kind of sampler

Remember back in January when I did a lot of bead weaving?  There's still a lot of it I haven't yet shown you.  Mainly because it's unfinished!  I finished a bracelet off the other day so it's time to show you.

This is from Seed Bead Stitching by Beth Stone,* it's a brilliant book if you're interested in bead weaving at all.  I made the peyote stitch sampler.

This is a really good introduction to peyote stitch (basically a stitch which looks like a brick wall) as it's a variety of different patterns, all made just by varying the order you pick the beads up.  In the book it's black and white, but it called for Delicas so I just used what I had, surprisingly pink!

I decided to try a stitched button closure on this one.  I used the pattern from The Beadworker's Guild Introduction to Beadwork - Bracelets *.

I really enjoyed this project and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

*this is an affiliate link.  If you click and go to Amazon and buy something, I get a few pence towards a gift voucher.