The Wedding Bracelet comes to life!

EVENTUALLY got the stuff from the Bead shop! Had to wait till the weekend to put it all together, but it was totally worth it... I did this without thinking much about it - in retrospect i would have taken the memory wire coil and made a mark on it with permanent ink in a straight line from the one end of the coil to the other (to mark where the loops end / begin) because it's very hard to keep it all together all the time!

First thing to do is make a small loop at the end of the coil to stop the beads. I used my girl's small computer pliers - the memory wire is relatively easy to bend.

First bead is on! I started with a loop of white seed beads, and threaded them by using the open end of the coil as a hook to pick them up - sort of made me thought of a sugar bird funneling nectar down its beak :). Yes - that is my foot holding down the bottom end of the coil - i'm sure there are appropriate tools, but i don't have patience or money enough for that!

Next came a loop of silver-lined glass beads that I picked up from the local market on Saturday after having a sudden panic attack about not having enough beads!

After that I added the cat-eye semi-opaque, semi-grey beads - these were cool to work with because they slipped down the coil by themselves, instead of me having to push them down. Again in retrospect, i discovered that, by stretching the coil apart upwards (forcing the loops further apart and more vertical), even the smaller beads slipped down effortlessly :)

All ready for the aisle!

Fly on by sweet angel

Weekend project number 1. Or actually it's number 12 or so, but this is the first one I'm blogging about. I'm trying to renew some of our old t-shirts to get more life out of them, while at the same time saving money on new ones for these ideas in my head. Using old T's also takes off the pressure of getting it right first time...

So I wanted wings on my back. I've been thinking a lot about this two-tshirt thing, with cuts in the top layer to show the colour of the bottom layer. I'll post my first experiment in this department soon, but I want to get this one out now. I rummaged through our cupboards and found a brown T neither of us has worn more than twice, and a white T that was always too small. Perfect for the bottom layer, in other words.

I start by sewing key points of the two T's together. This is essential with two different brands or cuts of shirt, to ensure they sit properly on one another. With two T's from the same range I only sew the line from the neck to the shoulders. It is important to sew only on the seams to avoid the material pulling funny or showing the sewing. That rhymes.

Next I drape the shirt over a chair to keep the shape while i trace the wings on the back. I looked for the perfect pair of wings on Google, and photoShopped all the inside detail out, so that i had only the outlines. I chose wings with an expressive outline, because the material doesn't allow for much detail once cut. It's more important to get the overall shape right.

Then I print them out on A4, and cut out the inside to create a stencil.

This gets pinned onto the back of the T, and using a laundry marker i trace the outline onto the shirt. From previous experience I now know to trace it a little smaller than i need it to be, because the idea is for the material to pull back and curl over a little.

Now i simply hand-stitch all along the marked lines with small, close zig-zag stitches that show only very minimally on the front of the shirt. This stitch has a name, but I don't know it in English... The stitching catches both layers of T-shirt.

Then comes the fun part - cutting out the inside of the wings from the top T-shirt layer. I cut about 2mm away from the stitched line, to give the material room to curve over.

And that's it - I have wings on my back... :)