Sunday, January 8, 2017

I did a lecture on bead embroidery at my bead group last week. In it I showed this pendant from start to finish. I choose two stone cabochons in my favorite color. The base row around them is pearls. For the inner bezel row I used size 15 seed beads. It looked too bland in all aqua so I picked up the coppery color from the stones to add flair. Next I stitched on the rondelles as accents. I put copper two hole kheops around them. After filling in the backround it was on to the edging. When I started I was sure that I would use  fringe because I really like fringe but when I came on the idea of daggers the fringe looked too busy. I stitched a row of dark blue daggers then topped it with a row of aqua ones. Inside that is a row of transparent drops to finish it all. I am please with how this piece turned out and my lecture went really well.
I wanted to show several variations in bead embroidery so members could get an idea of what can be done with this wonderful technique. This is the pendant I showed next. I used ladder stitched strips to bezel the cabochon. The connecting row is twisted seed beads. To make the piece cohesive I used a ladder stitched bail and twisted fringed. Picots with seed beads between finish the edge.
The base row of this pendant uses dark purple faceted ovals. The first row of the bezel is two drop hubble stitch and the inner row is a window bezel. I made a herringbone bail and crown points edging. The fringe is gathered with drops at the end.
A serpentine cabochons is the center of this pendant. I used two hole half moons in dark green metallic for the base row. White pearls are inside of that. When making the inner row of  bezel it looked blah until I added the aqua seed beads. I picked up the aqua again in the brick stitched bail. I used graduated fringe to show another option and a side petal edge. I hope that you like what I made.