Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Halfway




 First things first: I finished the beaded ornament cover. I had to make a few modifications; interesting since I bought the kit from the designer. There are two kinds of beaded ornament covers. One is loose on the ball, usually with long dangles. The other is fitted onto the ball. The other covers I've done so far are the loose style.

There are s couple of advantages to the loose style. First, if the ball ever breaks it's easy to replace it. Second, and more important in this case (at least so far!), the fitted style has to be fitted fairly exactly onto the ball so it stays in place and looks good.

This one was hard to test the fit of until it was really close to being done - the strips of medallions and the larger medallions were made and then attached with a ring of beads around the top and bottom as well as the beads to the large medallion. When I got it together it was way too loose.

I assume the bead size was correct since the kit was put together by the designer and shown as one of the samples in the directions. My guess is that it is a function of my tension.


The solution I came up with (since I really didn't want to take it all apart and use fewer beads!) was to stitch an X of seed beads across the bottom of the cover through the ends of the strips. I also made a similar stitch around the top to pull it in. Seems relatively stable.
So 26 weeks are complete - halfway through the year. A few more than 26 ornaments since I painted several one week and beaded more than one once or twice. I discovered that the mix was pretty well distributed: 3 bead covers, 4 other seed and glass beaded, 6 Czech blown glass, 7 painted, 5 with pins and sequins or beads, 4 knitted and 7 of various other sorts. Wow!

No comments: