Monday, April 13, 2009

Symphonie de Tulipes

My Dutch Spiral Challenge piece is finally complete. Six weeks of learning, experimenting, hair-pulling, frustration, elation...phew!

I had never 'engineered' a piece as complex as this before, so it was a challenge on many levels but I thoroughly enjoyed (almost) every stitch. During the construction of this necklace, it became apparent how little I really knew about beadweaving. The learning curve has been steep, but satisfying. And the end result is a piece I can be proud of:

Symphonie de Tulipes
(Symphony of Tulips)
My 'Symphony' contains no less than six different beadweaving techniques...four of which I had never tried, and had to learn for this challenge:

*Brick stitch
*Odd-count peyote
*Tubular peyote
*Two-drop herringbone
*Tubular herringbone
*Dutch spiral


The necklace can be worn a number of different ways, thanks to a tubular peyote loop which slides up and down the tubular herringbone 'stems'. As above, or like this:

Or like this:

The entire piece laid out:
I spent many hours working on the design of my tulips. The jury is still out on whether they actually resemble tulips, but I'm fairly pleased with the end result as it was my first attempt creating dimensional flowers. I had fun experimenting with colour graduation, each tulip contains three different shades of seed beads. No two tulips are the same...each petal is different!

A close-up of the tubular peyote loop:

And the herringbone 'bell':

I was planning on making a beadwoven clasp, but simply ran out of time. Instead, I tapered off the dutch spiral ends using peyote stitch, and used a simple silver clasp. Voila!


If you managed to make it through all of those photos, you deserve a gold medal! Thanks for looking :)

26 comments:

  1. It's absolutely lovely! You have the patience of a saint! Beautiful work - congrats!

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  2. Oh my Godness!!
    This work is absolutely wonderful!!!
    You are a great artist!!!

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  3. That is amazing - well done. You should be proud!

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  4. Brilliant! I love the subtlety of the colors in the tulips - the whole piece absolutely shouts of spring! Bravo!!!!

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  5. Oh My! An absolutely stunning symphonie! Well worth the struggles.

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  6. Wow, this is incredible! It is amazing that you only just learnt some of the stitches. You inspire me to stop coasting & put more thought & effort in my own work.

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  7. Thank you everyone for the kind comments :)

    Sarah, yes 'learnt' is the word...I've yet to master any stitches! LOL But practice makes perfect, they say ;) Glad I inspired you!

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  8. This is a work of art, Belinda... beautiful work :)

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  9. Великолепно!)Тюльпаны получились как живые)))

    удачи и творческого вдохновения)

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  10. Well Belinda ... you've outdone yourself with this one. I adore it. :)

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  11. Just a stunning piece of work. Well done

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  12. Once again you have created a masterpiece Belinda. In my eyes, you have executed all aspects if this piece so perfectly. The balance of colour, the design.....everything. I hope you have some plans for this one. The way you have managed to incorperate so many techniques is nothing but admiral. Beautiful work.......

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  13. stunning Belinda...
    mona & the girls

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  14. Thank you so much, all of your lovely comments mean a lot to me ♥

    Steph, no plans for this piece. Except for re-making it with some beautiful seedies I bought from Jo at Cranberry! I only used el cheapo seedies for this version because it was a prototype...but ran out of time to make the 'proper' version in time for the challenge LOL

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  15. Wow, this is stunning, congratulations !

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  16. I think you did a fantastic job on the whole project. I'd have never guessed that you had never worked with those stitches :)

    And the tulips do indeed look like tulips. What a beautiful piece of wearable art!

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  17. Oh My! This is stunning!!!My favorite flowers, the tulips do indeed look like tulips!!!:))The whole piece is absolutely WONDERFUL! Bravo!!!

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  18. This is absolutely the most beautiful spiral I've ever seen, and the tulips are awesome.

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  19. Beautiful work, Belinda! Amazing!

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  20. Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave such lovely comments :) You are all wonderful! ♥

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  21. semplicemente meravigliosa.Non ho mai visto niente di così bello e perfetto, bravissima. ciao Daniela

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  22. Beatiful bead work.. It is so beatiful. got me speechless for a while.. Love your lovely blog too. keep up!

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  23. So beautyful masterpeace! When I saw the picture I didn´t hesitated for a moment that these are tulips.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to leave me a comment!

B.
-xo-