A bit of how this month's alternate bead idea developed....
This month I decided to make use of a large pot of safety pins I had. I had also picked up a pack of coloured safety pins at the 'Been There, Done That' Table at TVCT one time. and I had a little collection of brass safety pins.
I also had 5 small bags of bugle beads that remind me of 'barley straws'. (This month sort of has 5 weeks - so each colour can go for a different week.)
They are matt as well as being unusual colour blends and quite a bit longer than normal bugles. Which has meant they didn't really work with other projects. So I thought I would see if I could use them with the pins in some way.
At first I tried putting beads onto the open pin part of the 'silver' pins and then thread them onto the coloured pin, which would also have beads on it's open pin part. However, this meant you had to thread the beaded pins onto through the larger opening...and they flopped about. But when I tried to do a sort of stitch round their circle sections connected by a seed bead, it made them rise up a bit. Not a big problem, but if I use them as embellishments on a gown, they would cover the beads on the large pin.
Here is that trial sample.
You can see it would hide the coloured pin almost totally as a sewn on embellishment.
Also, the 'straws' were too big to go on the brass pins, so I used a clear bugle with the same seed beads for that day to use as an accent. You can just see it in the centre.
However, one of the seed beads I had chosen to go with this twisted 'straw' was a bit big. I thought I might change things around. Use mostly accent pins with one 'normal' one. (because I had 1 half size straw. Eventually I had 2 more smaller ones because the ends broke.)
But it was just a bit too different, and I wasn't sure I could replicate it with the other straws for the other weeks. So, it too is just a trial sample.
At last I decided to try to open the round end of the coloured pin a bit using pliers and a small screwdriver. Then I could thread the beaded silver beads onto the side which doesn't open and put beads on the side which does. Close the pin and pinch the swirl back together -being careful not to damage the colour coating.
so here is the first week's beads...using blue twisted 'straws' on 'silver' pins and one beaded brass pin as an accent.
no.274
no.275
no.276
no.277
no.278
no.279
These are much tidier. They move around like a fringe and are not too time consuming to make.
1 comment:
I think the last one is gorgeous - so much thinking and work you are putting into these ... J
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