I hope everyone is having a wonderful IBW – I’m certainly enjoying making time to focus on beading. As you know I’m working using my donated ‘exploration’ PDF – a template and set of stitch instructions and ideas for a bead embroidered ‘I Heart Beads’ brooch, and every day or so I’m sharing the results. It’s kind of a week of making samples.
Today I’ve stuck with the heavily beaded style I shared yesterday, but if I’m honest I don’t think this one is as successful. I think it’s probably missing the flat 3 & 4mm sequins I love to use so much – I didn’t have them in the right shade and I wanted to stick with beads as a test. I think some of the bead groupings are also too numerous – this is after all quite a small piece so I need to probably stick to groups of 3, 5 or 7 of anything bigger than an 11. On the other hand I’m still keen on the stem stitched letters (with serifs!) and going back to the cup chain and a beaded sunshine edge worked (the eagle eyed amongst you will notice I didn’t put a black edging on the heart prior to that edging, which was a change and looks fine).
Steps were:
1) Black foundation, purple heart (both hard felt) and white ultrasuede ribbon with stem stitched letters (3 strands DMC). Ribbon edged with couched 2mm Black cup chain from my Etsy shop. No black edging round the heart at this stage.
2) Stacked cup beads, 4mm and 3mm rounds and FPs. Seeded Rizos, and 3.4mm drops (I didn’t have any 2.8mm which I missed – I like using both sizes together). I used to many drops together so I popped a couple of teeny flowers on to break them up (made from shrinkets coloured with acrylic inks).
3) Black ultrasuede backing, then a simple black 11 seed sunshine (brick stitch) edge.
So overall good, but not as good as the red one. I’ll get the sequins back out for the next one – lesson learnt. If you’d like to see what I’m up to or look at the other kindly donated patterns then they are all on the @beadworkers website in the #InternationalBeadingWeek section here – https://beadworkersguild.com/free-patterns/