Beaded button development

So I told you I was developing something with the bangles. And they definitely take too long to do one a day.

So today, I started developing something a bit quicker for the November unusual beaded something.

I picked up these mother of pearl buttons at FOQ in 2013 at the Buttonlady's stand.

I have 6 of each. And as there were actually 6 types, I had more than 30. I bought double the number of the flower shape to use on a blouse. So, they were just right for this blouse. I have a few of those left.

One reason I haven't used them for the beading project yet is because I couldn't work out in my head what I might stitch them to. Then a month or so ago, Aldi had sets of felt pads (and other little adhesive bits) for putting on the bottom of things so your furniture doesn't get scratched. And I thought this might be a plan.

So, today I chose a round mother of pearl button I had in my button box to develop the technique.

The first thing I discovered was that the sticky backing of the felt was VERY sticky. It was so sticky I couldn't hardly move it from finger to finger!
So I cut 1 inch squares of sew-in interfacing to cover the sticky. I can peel it back to hide knots.

But the needle ends up sticky! I am only stitching right through for stitching the button on. And then making use of my old tomato pin cushion (nearly 40 years old!) and the emery filled strawberry to get the sticky off.

There is something like sand in the tomato, too, so between the two of them, it works!

I can trim the interfacing later when I stitch them to something. But I may decided to stitch them on with more beads through the interfacing. So, they are square for now.

A lot of times when I am getting started, I select the beads I think will work for the month. I chose several kinds of size 15. (I only needed 5 types because I will rotate them through the shapes.

This is as far as I got when I decided this size would take toooo long.

I changed the bead size and got on with the first one.
bead305*

It pretty much worked. Just needs a bit of refining. But that is generally what happens as I go along in the month. Because it isn't round, it was a bit more difficult to work out the spacing.

And then I decided to finish the trial piece. I continued with size 15 and then filled in with some size 11 beads.

Much time later, this is the result. I really like it. But no, I am not doing size 15 on these again!

November trial beaded button
*The rest of October's beads and a photo of the whole set will be in Sunday's blog post as usual.