Friday, April 24, 2015

Bead Embroidery WIP

Ever since I attended a bead embroidery class a few months ago and made a beaded pendant (my new favourite thing), I've been fascinated with the process of bead embroidery, and the possibilities it opens up in terms of shapes and creations.


All my beaded shapes so far have been created on canvas, and whilst I've been able to create some cool shapes and cute figures (imho - see some examples here), I've been a little limited by the canvas squares / pixel designs and the size of beads I'm able to use.  All of a sudden, the ability to embroider free-form shapes, or simply to add more detail to my existing designs, opens up all sorts of possibilities.

But the possibility of freedom in creativity is also a little unnerving, so for a few weeks now, I've been playing around with different designs, trying to come up with "the one" that I think will make a good bead embroidery pattern.  Then this week I finally got fed up with procrastinating, and settled on a design to try out.  Going with the mindset that it was simply to try things out - no pressure to make it perfect - this is a learning process and I'll see how things go along the way...

Since it's spring, and daffodils are pretty prevalent, even in the suburbs of Lancaster, I went with a daffodil design.  And I already had some yellow and orange beads too.  Although obviously it wouldn't hurt to buy a few more... you know, just in case...


So I did a bit of sketching, settled on a design and traced it out, chose some beads, and - eeeek! - put needle to felt...


So far so good - let's see how this pans out...

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