There’s nothing like making something yourself to get you to appreciate those who do it professionally. There are many magazines like “Bead and Button” that show beautiful illustrations on how to make a central motif for a necklace that I decided to make some for myself to use on my art quilts. However, most of the designs in the magazines show a central stone or cabochon. These domed stones are then meant to be held in place with a circlet of beads and then the bead that spread outwards are carefully worked with interlacing threads or thin wiring to get the beads to lay flat.
I however, as usual, did not follow the directions. I sewed a button onto a circle of felt, and then started surrounding the button with increasingly larger beads. I wanted a circle of bugle beads to come out from the center, to give a star effect, but I used ones that were way too long for this project (about 2″ or 5 cm long). As a result, there were gaps in between the bugle bead ribs, and I had to fill in with shorter beads. as a result, the whole applique did not lay flat.
By the time I got to my 2nd attempt at making one of these beaded appliques, I was a little better at the process. This time, I used shorter bugle beads (about 1″ or 2.5cm long) and only one row of large beads around the same central button. This way the bugles lay much flatter, and I didn’t have as many gaps to fill in on the spokes of the wheel radiating outwards from the central button. That allowed me to repeat an outer circle of the same large blue beads that I had used around the center button, which I feel tied the whole look together much better than in the first applique that I attempted.
The final attempt at making beaded appliques in this style, I used two circular rows of bugle beads. Each of the rows used beads about .5″ or 13mm long, and again the results were pretty lumpy. Getting that last outer row of bugle beads to lay flat was really hard, but having spent so much time constructing it, I used the applique anyway. Besides there is so much going on in the rest of the surface design, that few would be as picky as I’ve been in describing these appliques.
The take-away for me is to practice, practice, practice then starting a new technique. They’re never as easy as they look in the book or magazine, and who knows how many attempts the author went through to get those perfect looking ones in the picture. It does give me an appreciation for all who do handwork, especially with tiny beads….and please pray for no bead accidents in the middle of constructing a piece. Those little beads really bounce quite a ways then they fall.
What have been some of your big Ah-Has that you’ve learned while working in your medium? Why not share some of your discoveries so that the rest of us don’t have to make the same mistakes.
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