Ruby Dahlia Satin Box

Two years ago, my friend Hazel asked me to help her try some bead embroidery for the first time. She wanted make a satin box for her mother's 80th birthday and had a month to complete it. I decided the easiest approach would be to use the Magenta Star design from Margaret Lee's bead embroidery book and to work through the design myself  at the same time. 

I already had a navy blue satin box and some matching  cotton fabric. It was an easy choice to pick out ruby tri-cut and seed beads. Hazel chose to use anemone colours for her flower. They worked really well and she finished the box in good time for her mother's birthday. On the other hand, I  put the project to one side and only finished it 1 year later. Although I can tell it was early in the year because of the snow on the ground.

Wave Handbag - avoiding second side syndrome

I am continuing to work on the Wave Handbag from the JEC as a background project. In my last post I had completed the lines for the flap and back piece. I decided to invest in another JE frame so that I can work on the smaller front piece at the same time. By working on both pieces simultaneously,  I can make sure I have enough beads for the front and flap of the bag to match. It also means I'll avoid procrastinating finishing off the second side.

Hearts for Manchester and London

I grew up in Manchester and my parents still live there. I also have 2 teenage girls so the situation is waiting in a theatre foyer to collect the girls after an event is a very familiar situation.  So it was with disbelief and great sadness that I read the news about the terror attack in my hometown. When I heard about the #AHeart4MCR project I was inspired to create this bead embroidered heart. The deadline for the Manchester heart drop was a bit sooner than I expected and I knew I wouldn't get it finished in time.

A new call for hearts was raised by #AHeart4LDN after the London terror attack, so I decided to change tack and make machine embroidered free standing lace hearts for the London drop. I used designs from Kinship Kreations, which stitched out beautifully on Brother machine. As recommended  I hooped 2 layers of water soluble stabiliser which made the result quite stiff. I thought this would make the hearts more robust so it was probably a good thing, as the hearts would be hung out on the street. I embellished them with hot fix crystals for a little bit of sparkle and posted them off.

The heart drop in London was yesterday and I was delighted to see a twitter post with a picture of one of my hearts. I have no idea who the recipient was but the fact that she was happy to receive it made my day. This success spurred me onto finish the bead embroidery on my own heart this weekend. Now I just need to work out how to mount it. My original intention was a simple stuffed heart but I think it would look better as a flat heart with a covered cardboard backing to give it a bit more support.

Making Waves

My current Japanese bead embroidery project is the JEC Wave Handbag.  The design comes in 2 parts. A larger piece which forms the bag back and flap, and a smaller piece which forms the bag front. Even though I am treating this as a background project, I've made reasonable progress over the last couple of months, finishing the outlines on the back and flap. The entire design will be blue iris triangle and seed beads. The original JEC bag had hex beads instead of the triangle beads, so I know my bag will look slightly different when it's finished. The triangle beads form a new clean line when they are couched down but I'm not sure how they will look when 2 lines are side by side. I am imagining choppy seas!

I've come to conclusion this is not going to be a very photogenic project. The blue iris beads look lovely close up but they come out very dark in a photograph. My camera phone automatically brightens the shot if I don't take the picture quick enough. If I take the picture too quickly the auto focus doesn't have time to work. I will probably need to ask Jen to take some pictures with her proper camera when she's home for Easter.

Peacock Mat

Two years after I started it, the Peacock mat, my Phase 4 Japanese Embroidery piece, is finished. For a large portion of the time this has been a background work in progress project and a fair chunk has been done while demonstrating at craft fairs.

A wide range of beads were used in this design. Seeing it come to life as each different colour was added, was very rewarding. The kit came only with a design sheet and a picture of the finished mat, so some judgement was needed when deciding which beads to put where. This means that every version of the design will be slightly different and personal to the embroiderer who worked on it.

If I was making it up into a mat I would need to add tassels on the corner but I think I will probably get it framed.

Satin boxes

 

I attended my first Japanese Bead Embroidery class 5 years ago this month. At that time our teacher, Marion, was the only qualified Japanese Bead Embroidery teacher in the UK. Marion designed this satin box lid as a taster project and it uses many of the Phase 1 techniques. If I'm honest, I only tried the class because I wanted to learn the standard Japanese Embroidery and I saw this as an easier way in. Jean, a local  JE teacher, hosted the class. She had been learning Japanese Bead Embroidery herself and had already completed a large number of the JEC bead embroidery bag designs. It was when Jean brought her bags out to show us that I was sold. Bead embroidery comes alive when you shine a light on it and I was hooked by the bling. By the time I started my Phase 1 piece  a couple of months later, Jean had qualified as a bead embroidery teacher, so we then had 2 teachers. This meant we were never without a Japanese Bead Embroidery teacher in the UK, even when Marion moved to New Zealand a year or so later. I think Jean's current count of bead embroidery pieces is 17, so she's a very experienced teacher.

 

Earlier this year I finished Poppy Pouch, my Phase 3 piece. Before starting the Peacock Mat for Phase 4, I fancied doing a smaller project, so another satin box lid seemed like the ideal project. I had some Valori Wells patchwork fabric which I thought might be suitable as the base fabric. This would also give me a chance to take some baby steps into design. So here is my first attempt at designing bead embroidery.



 

 

Patchwork fabric isn't the best base for bead embroidery because it doesn't have a high enough thread count. The fabric needs to be stretched quite tightly on the frame, so it tends to get distorted, especially as the weft and warp stretch will be different. For this first piece I didn't use any stabiliser at all and as you can see in the picture below, the circular motif was anything but circular once it was on the frame. There was also a lot of give in the fabric when I was stitching. In the end I had to average out the design elements to make it look reasonably regular. It was fun to do and the colours made a welcome change from the black beads in Poppy Pouch.

 



Learning from this experience, for the next box lid, I backed the patchwork fabric with medium weight vilene. This time the fabric was much more stable to stitch but I can't honestly say there was any less distortion. In the photo below the motif is decidedly egg shaped. It didn't matter quite so much because the flower in this design could be more random. There was another disadvantage with the vilene. When you design something there's a lot more trial and error, so I did far more undoing an redoing on these pieces and over time the vilene started disintegrating. I think the best solution is woven interfacing but the result would probably be too heavy for this particular project.



 

When choosing the beads, I amplified the colours in the base fabric and this was the final result.

 

 

I was initially worried the background green was a step too far. However, when I took this photo at the weekend with a hint of the garden outside, I realised that however bright I thought the colours were, nature can always rack it up a notch!

 

Poppy Pouch

 

Here's my Phase III Japanese bead embroidery project. It's taken 18 months to complete because it has been very much a background project while I concentrated on Japanese embroidery. As is often the way, I have focused on getting it finished because I wanted the frame for another project.

 

The first side was mostly completed last year. I tried to follow the JEC photo as closely as possible with the use of clear beads for highlights.

 

 

When it came to the second side I decided to use all red beads for the flowers and use the clear beads to show the leaves disappearing behind the petals. I'm not sure it altogether works and I think the shades of red supplied with the kit  are a little too close to get a real degree of shading. The shading is really achieved with the padding which is the real star of the show for this piece.

 

Here's a couple of close-up shots which show the padding a little better.



 

 

I demonstrated at a couple of shows with this piece.  Quite a few people said "How can you see to sew black beads on black fabric" but the most memorable comment was "Oh that pink blob in the centre is beads!" It wasn't meant as an insult, just must have the first thing that popped into the lady's mind. She stayed for a longer chat afterwards and did say some nice things afterwards.

 



Calm Flow - finished

And now a picture of Calm Flow, which I made up in Februrary. It needed to come off the frame because I was starting Hanazume, my Phase 1 Japanese Embroidery piece at the beginning of March. The fabric it was stitched on had a distinct tendency to fray so I was glad I had experience from making up the Eyeglass Case. It was a nice feeling to get it out of the way - I'm a Completer/Finisher when time permits!

Eyeglass case - finished

The eyeglass case was actually made up at the end of last year. In the end, I found some burgundy cotton velvet which was a reasonable colour match.  I was keen to get it done because I was close to finishing Calm Flow and I didn't want to have a queue of pieces waiting to be made up - I have enough UFOs/WIPs. To persuade myself to get on with it, I decided to do just one construction step each evening and after a week it was done. I was dreading cutting around the beadwork, especially the notches around the corners but by thinking "Tonight I'm just going to do xxx and no more", I got over the fear.

Calm Flow

One year after starting, I finished my Japanese Bead Embroidery Phase 2 piece, Calm Flow. The majority of this piece is black or silver tri-cut beads strung on black thread, couched down with black thread. I found this a very calming technique - forgive the pun. The weekend after I finished Calm Flow, while shoe shopping for my daughter, Jen, I spotted a beaded bag with the same flowing design for £50. On the shop bag, the silver beads were bugles and and the black beads were regular seed beads rather than the tricuts but the it had the same flowing lines. Initially I was mortified and it made me think about the time I had spent doing it. But that is the point. While I was embroidering Calm Flow, I was in my quiet space, doing what I wanted to do. Working full-time with 2 school age daughters, there are a lot of things that lay claim on my time and energy. The time I get to spend on my hobbies is my treat to myself.

Eyeglass Case

This time it's my Japanese Bead Embroidery Phase I piece



I started it in September 2009 and added the last bead in January this year. It's waiting to be made into an eyeglass case, so technically it's not finished yet. I was waiting for warmer weather to finish it because the back needs to be sprayed with water and then left to dry. My next excuse was that I didn't like the maroon felt that came with kit and is intended to be used as the lining. That excuse has failed now because I've found some faux suede that is the right colour. Better get on and finish it!