So at last, I have finally finished my beaded belt. That means my 1912 outfit is complete! Okay, I'm still missing the headpiece, but still... I've also been gardening a lot, knitting a bit and thinking of making an 18th century outfit for the ''fêtes de la nouvelle-france'' in Quebec city in early august ... we'll see if I end up doing it, or even finishing it... My garden is doing great, I'll make another post very soon about it. I've got some baby tomatoes growing and my cucumber plants are in flowers.
Anyway, here is my belt!!
Anyway, here is my belt!!
Awesome isn't it? I watched the whole season 5 of 30 Rock while finishing it, so that gives you an idea of all the time that went into it... I decided to put little hooks and eyes to tie it in the back. Oh and I forgot to mention, but the black fabric I used came from a old pair of pants. So the belt is from upcycled fabric!
close-up on the hooks and eyes
And this last picture is a mandala I drew on my bedroom wall. The wall itself was painted with some special paint so we could draw with chalk on it. For the last two years or so it was sporting some huge flowers my mom made while I was in my old appartment ans I was tired of them... so I washed the whole wall and drew this with colored chalk. It took me a whole afternoon, and it's quite big, maybe about one meter wide (that's about three feet wide). It's supposed to be a birth mandala, I figured it would inspire me with my work as a doula and with all the articles I'm writing on my doula blog...
I'll take some pictures with my whole 1912 outfit soon, with the soes and everything, and I also finally bought some ribbon laces for my 1840 corset, so there's some serious picture-taking coming soon. I'll do that some thime this week. Stay tuned!
Woohoo! That belt is amazing.
RépondreSupprimerThanks!
SupprimerThat's beautiful, and just the kind of fancy handwork I'd love to do. Bravo!
RépondreSupprimerVal
Thanks! I'm sure you could do it, It's not complicated at all really, just an incredibly long process!!
SupprimerDid you have a pattern to follow for stitching the beads on? Or did you just free-hand it? I tried going back through your entries to see if you had more details but couldn't find any.
SupprimerI think there is a class on beaded embroidery at our upcoming costume convention in Los Angeles, so that might be worth looking into but with looking at it, I think I could manage just doing small stitches to attach the beads.
Val
Actually the fabric I was using had some kind of motif on it. I liked it so I just followed the lines that were already on the fabric. If you look closely at the picture of the hooks (or some of the other unfinished pictures of the belt, especially the earlier ones), you can see some lighter lines on the fabric. That's the pattern I followed. And since it was much more complicated than what I actually did, there was a part of freehand in there to simplify the design. And I never followed any kind of beading class, I just attached the beads about three at a time and kept a some of tension in the thread and it worked fine :)
SupprimerGood luck!
Laurie
Ok then! It gives me a good idea, and the tip of using 3 beads to a stitch really helps. It looks like a lot of fun.
RépondreSupprimerVal