Friday Update

I went to the Bead Expo and a bead embroidery class last Saturday.  I had booked the class a couple of months ago when I was feeling very low, lacking in energy both physical and mental/creative, and thought it might help to kick start me a bit.  In the meantime I have recovered some of the lost energy but haven't really got any more creative than socks and hand towels, so this was still looking like a good idea.

And it was!  I was intrigued by the teacher's (scanty) information.  I couldn't find anything about her (Cheryl Hartwick) on the web other than her listing on the Bead Society of Victoria and I was interested in her style of bead embroidery, which looked similar to mine but was not identical.  She uses brightly coloured printed fabric as the jumping off point for her work and I wanted to see how that would work.  The class was advertised for Beginners, which I know I am not in terms of bead embroidery, but I hoped she would forgive me.

It was fun.  She did forgive me.  I snuck Harry along for the ride and once I had confessed about my complete lack of noviceness, I passed him around and felt quite chuffed at the responses.  I didn't exactly learn anything but it had the desired effect of making me put needle to bead and cloth once more, and I felt energised being around beady people.

She takes the aforementioned brightly coloured print cloth, backed with a substantial interfacing (she uses iron-on, I prefer to tack felt down to the back because I can;t abide doing hand-stitiching through anything sticky).  Something in the pattern or the colours, or both, starts her off (shapes, whatever) and then she lets her mind and hands run away with themselves.  With lovely, colourful results.

I am not too sure about this particular piece I am doing.  The beads are cheapies because I didn't want to waste good ones on an experiment.  I don't think I have done the best design I am capable of, by any means.  But I feel thoroughly back in the groove and feel lots of good projects will flow from this in one way or another.

I will finish this piece and I will blog about it.  I thought it was interesting to take day by day photos for this week, but I won't take any more until it is finished now.

Oh, and a couple of items came home with me from the Bead Expo.  And they were bought before Decluttering by Numbers was initiated, so they don't count!

This was the fabric I used.  The overview shows how I used the central leaf as a starting out point.

After outlining the leaf veins and doing two lots of shadowing around the shape of that, I added some extra, bigger beads and worked them into a design.  Wombat at this point said that it looked like someone who had just realised she had missed out on a shoe sale!  (He knows too well how addicted to shoes his mother is).

A day later and I had filled in various bits.

 And this was yesterday's finishing point.  I have marked out the dimensions of a cuff on the fabric and I will stick to that size and shape, though whether it turns into a finished cuff depends on how I feel about it when I have got that far.  I will blog about that when I have got to that stage.

 And these are the things that followed me home.  The only Robyn Atkins book I don't own.  A Bead Zapper thing that melts beading thread (when you want it to!)  Wombat asked if it was another Sonic Screwdriver.  I agreed that it could be,  And Silk Strings, very hard to get in Australia and absolutely luscious.