#34: Beaded Baroness’s Favour

needleworkes ♦ February 6, 2015 ♦ Leave a comment

This is my first attempt at beaded embroidery – stringing the beads and then couching them down with cotton thread. This certainly was a learning curve. It is quite challenging deciding which direction to lay the beads, and to get the beads to lie flat without bumping up. Much unpicking and persistance was involved. I actually nearly gave up on this one!

It was stitched on a double layer of linen, using 15/0 Miyuki opaque seed beads from Over the Rainbow.

The swan is outlined and filled in with beads, and that worked well. I tried doing the same for the sun’s rays part but this led to awkward spaces between the beads where the rows changed directions. No matter which way I tried, it looked bad. So I settled for beading the rest in simple rows. The edging is a series of 5-bead angled loops, which finished the edges of the piece quite nicely.