Flamenco!

I've been trying to clear off my worktable so that I can have some room for new projects.  I have a hard time working with a lot of clutter around and that's what had happened to my table.  A lot of projects started and in little bowls, or on bead trays in various states of completion.  Well, I've made some progress, and this is the newest necklace to be finished.

I bought the art glass doughnut at a bead show last year.  I'm sorry that I don't remember the name of the artist who made it so that I could give her credit.  But, I loved the colors and knew I had to do something with it.   It sat on my worktable for months before I decided to combine it with a Cellini spiral.  I love the Cellini spiral, which is a bead weaving variation of tubular peyote. 

In a magazine I had seen a version of Cellini spiral which reversed itself.  You can see how cool it looks in the middle of the spiral where it reverses direction.  When the spiral was finished I had to decide how I was going to use it with the art glass doughnut.  I had been thinking of different ways of attaching the art glass to the spiral, using the spiral as a bail.  But, I didn't like anything I came up with.  After much fiddling I remembered that my daughter had made me a lenght of Viking knit from lime green wire.  I had the lime green silk ribbon and it had emerged as the best way to attach the glass doughtnut to the necklace.  I didn't want to hide any of the Cellini spiral by looping the silk over it, so I strung the spiral on the Viking knit and tied the silk to the wire.  

   

Here you can see the Viking knit wire with the silk tied in a loose knot around it.  I finished the necklace with two silver cones and a toggle clasp.  My husband and daughter think the art class looks like  girls twirling in their flamenco skirts, hence the name!  I'm really pleased with the way this necklace turned out.  I took a while to decide what to do, but I'm pleased with the result.  And, I'm pleased that I found a perfect project to use the gift my dear daughter made for me quite a while ago.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.  I hope you have a lovely day and get to create something wonderful!

The Muse Revealed!

If you love beautiful beadwork then head on over to Scarlett Lanson's site thebeadersmuse.com to see what the muse was and what it inspired!  The work is wonderful.  The judges had a very difficult time, I'm sure. And Scarlett is amazing to pull together a contest that has become international.

No, my entry didn't win a prize, but I had fun working on it and I now have a great freeform necklace that I just love!

This is the necklace and here is a close up of the Muse as I used it.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great day!

Clematis for Mothers' Day

The clematis in my garden are beautiful this Mothers' Day and I wanted to share them with you as a way to say "Have a happy, wonderful, restful day"!

A new, to me,  Ralph Evison clematis that reminds me of a passion flower.

 

White for peace.  Have a peaceful day.

Bohemian Scarves~ part 2.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to finish my post about the Bohemian Scarves.  Spring time means lots of time gardening and enjoying the beautiful weather.  But, here I am ready to share with you the last three of the scarves. 

This one was fun to do for a variety of reasons.  First of all I knitted in godets using short rows, and that was fun.  I didn't know how it would work out but I think it looks pretty good.  The godets are in this picture puctuated by the ribbon flowers.  When I embellished the scarf, after finishing the knitting, I pleated the godets on the back and stitched the ribbon flowers to the front.  I also knitted one section so that it had a notch which I filled with  the embroidered applique.  You can see it at the neck.  I was intending to add a strip of ribbon to that area but the applique looked better!

This is a beaded yarn over stitch I developed while playing around with beaded lace stitches.  The square bead mix blended perfectly with the yarn colors.  By the way, the yarn I used for this section is one of my favorite luxury yarns.  It's Alchemy's Silken Straw.  The colors are wonderful and the fabric it creates is very drapey and luxurious.

This scarf used Maggie Jackson's linen yarn once again.  That yarn makes up into a wonderful fabric and it has a rustic appeal that I really like.  Up at the neck, in the center, is another color of Silken Straw.  Love that yarn!  I had fun with some of the embellishments on this scarf.  In a home decorating book I had seen fabric covered wooden beads used as tassels on the corners of a pillow.   I really liked the idea and filed it away to use someday.  I decided to use them at certain points on this scarf. 

Here's a close up of the tassel.  I used a batik fabric and some beads that I had used in one of the sections of the scarf.  Those little dangles are so cute and really added some fun to the scarf.

The last of the scarves really isn't a scarf.  It sort of grew into a wrap.  I had accumulated several yarns in a turquoise/lime green mix, along with a lot of turquoise and lime green solids and tonal yarns.  Since that's one of my favorite color combinations I guess it's not surprising that I would have a lot of yarns in those colors.  Well, I decided to put them together in one scarf.  But, as I said, I got a little carried away and it became a wrap.

This is the back of it.  I had some dichroic glass buttons that I had gotten at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and they were the perfect color to use with the yarns.  I decided to make the wrap in two pieces and sew the buttons on to attach the sections.  I really liked the way it worked out.  The beautiful turquoise ribbon that is threaded through the eyelets to the left of the buttons is Hanah silk ribbon.  I adore those ribbons for so many reasons!  The colors are to die for (or "dye" for!) and the drape is fabulous.  Anyway, I had this piece which just happened to be a perfect turquoise.

I hope you've enjoyed my minor obsession!  Ideas are always coming for more Bohemian Scarves.  I love making them because there are so many yarn combinations to try and  I can use  so many different embellishments on them.  So, there will be more coming.  I've actually got one in the very beginning stages right now.  We'll see where it takes me.

Thank you for stopping by to read my blog.  Have a wonderfully creative day!

The Bohemian Scarves

A few years ago at Stitches East, the convention for all things knit, I took a class with Maggie Jackson, the Irish knitwear designer.  I'm a big fan of Maggie's designs.  Her garments are easy to wear, with asymmetrical details which I love.  In this class we were making a scarf using Maggie's linen yarn and a few odds and ends of other yarns.  Along with the yarns she also provided embellishments, and a list of stitches which appear in her work regularly.  It was a great class, full of creativity.  Everyone had a wonderful time incorporating the different elements into the structure inherent in a class of any kind.  The method Maggie used for teaching the stitches and how to incorporate the different yarns and bits and bobs into the scarf was to have us make squares or rectangles of knitting which then would be sewn together. 

As I said, it was a fun session, but once I got home I decided to do my own thing.  This is what I do often after a class. During a class I'll get so many ideas on how to use what I'm learning, and when I get home I love to work those into the project.  Sometimes I even start the project over, and that's what I did with this scarf.  Thus was born the Bohemian Scarves! 

This was the first of the series.  It used the linen yarn from the class along with yarn from my stash.  I put aside the squares and rectangles that I came home with, and started from the the beginning.  I used a lot of the stitch patterns from Maggie's notes and from her books.  But, I also added some of my own.  I also decided to make the scarf in one piece.  So, I added stitches and decreased stitches as I went along.  In this picture you can see where the width decreases as it drapes around the neck. Those additions and subtractions appear though out the scarf.  The end piece is a half of an octogon which I attached to the scarf with a crochet stitch.  I incorporated beads, of course, and ribbons and buttons, all the things I love!  I even used one of my folded fabric flowers and a button from my friend Terrie.  In this picture, along with the flower, you can see some of the ribbons and trims I wove into the knitting, as well as some of the beads.

 

Of course, the ideas kept coming and I had to keep going!  More yarn and trim combination kept presenting themselves and each one was more exciting to  me than the next!  In the last three years I've made five Bohemian scarves with one being more of a wrap than a scarf.  One of my favorites, aside from this first one, is a very spring inspired combination of colors.  I love wearing this one in the spring and I named it Freesia because that was the color name of one of the yarns I used.

As I've been experimenting with this idea, and it really is experimenting, I've come up with different ideas for knitting elements and attaching them in the finishing process.  I have gone back to Maggie's original way of knitting these scarves and knit a square, rectangle or other shape and attached it later to the rest of the scarf.  The triangle you see here is one of  those ideas.  I attached it to the side edge with beads.  I always keep the neck edge straight and increase and decrease or add elements to the opposite edge so that the scarves are easy to wear.  As you can see I added a lucite flower bead to the end of the triangle as a little exclamation point!

There are more Bohemian scarves and there will be others I'm sure!  As I said, I keep getting ideas for yarn combinations and all the embellishments that I can use with them. I gather all the yarns and beads, fabrics, buttons and anything else I think I might use on a tray as a sort of design board. I've sent all but one off to Belle Armoire to see if they are interested in publishing them.  I'll post pictures of the others soon.  I didn't want you to think this was never going to end! 

Thank you for stopping by.  I hope you have a wonderfully creative day. 

The Muse

There is a young designer in Sedona, Arizona by the name of Scarlett Lanson.  Her work is incredible for her age.  She has decided that beads and beading will be her life's work and she is definitely committed to her goal.  She has a beading contest on her website, TheBeadersMuse.com, called "Use the Muse".  The contest is sponsored by Artbeads.com, which is a wonderful resource for beaders.  Scarlett sends you a kit of beads and crystals along with a component which she designates as the "Muse".  You can use as much or as little of the kit as you choose just so long as you use the Muse.  You can add anything from you own stash as well. The only other stipulation is that you keep the muse a secret until the winners are revealed on her site.  It's a great contest because anyone can enter regardless of their experience.  Scarlett's choice of bead colors is wonderful, and different every time.  You can also use any technique, beadweaving, stringing, polymer, anything as long as you use the muse.  The variety and quality of the beadwork that results is wonderful.

I had entered "Use the Muse 2" last year.  I had a lot of fun designing the necklace that I entered.  I titled it "Dusk in a Creole Garden" because I kept thinking of the courtyard gardens in New Orleans while I was working on it.

This is the finished piece.  While it didn't win I had a lot of fun with it.  I don't use blue very often, especially not the dusty blues which were prevalent in this kit.  The muse was the Lillypilly doughnut in the middle of the pendant.  That is where the inspiration for the title came from, which is the whole idea.  The muse inspires you and your creation!

I skipped Use the Muse3 because it was in the fall and that is always such a busy time around here.  But, I decided to participate in the fourth contest.  I just finished my entry this morning and I can show you a tease of what I did.   I can't show you the entire piece until the contest is over and the winners are announced on Scarlett's website.

I decided to use my very favorite technique which is freeform beadweaving.  I had a wonderful time creating this piece.  Instead of using freeform peyote I used a freeform netting stitch.  It was great fun, and I like having the two methods to choose from when I want to do freeform.  I think I'm going to name this one "River Bed" because the colors, and the way the beads flow together look like a dry river bed.  This time the colors in the kit were ones that I really like and I added some sage green beads to contribute to the earthiness of the composition.

Eventually, I'll be able to show you the entire necklace.  In the meantime, I have to go clean up the beads and plan the next project!  Thanks for visiting with me today.  Hope you're day is full of creativity!

There's a wedding in our future!

Our daughter is getting married next year!  I'm happy we have the time to plan the wedding without being rushed.  After securing our parish church for the date she and her fiance had chosen, the search for the perfect reception venue was on. It quickly became apparent that this whole planning process was going to generate a lot of contracts,  menus and information that needed to be filed.  So, I thought I should get out a file folder to keep it all together.  But, of course, I didn't want to use a plan manila folder because that would be so boring!  The creativity bug hit and I started thinking of how I could take a plain folder and do something interesting with it.  This is the result.

I started with this fabric from my stash, which I thought would be perfect for a wedding folder.  I went through the ribbon and button stash and found a silk ribbon and some buttons I liked.  I started by fusing WonderUnder to the back side of the fabric and then I stitched the ribbon to the fabric.  I left enough top and bottom to be able to tie the folder closed.  I sewed the buttons to what would be the front.  Of course this gave me an opportunity to make a tag.

 I had been tea dyeing some lace a few days ago, so I used some of that,  and I found the label in a tablet of paper I had gotten from The Queen's Ink last week.  I used some of Tim Holtz' metal flowers and corners to finish it off. 

Once the tag was complete I fused the fabric to the folder.  I found a lily of the valley print fabric in the stash for the inside of the folder.  It coordinates well with the outer fabric, and besides that, nothing says weddings to me like lily of the valley! You can see a peek of it here. 

I fused it to the inside of the folder and then cut slits through the front and threaded ribbon though them to attach the tag. 

I'm really pleased with the results.  It will be fun to get it out and add to it as the planning continues.  More fun than a boring plain manila folder!   I intend to give it to my daughter after the wedding so that she will have a keepsake with all the information about the big day and all that led up to it.  Best of all, she's thrilled with it too!

Thanks for visiting.   Remember that even mundane items in our lives can be made beautiful.  Have fun and create something today!