https://www.instagram.com/p/BN95b6eAPP2/?taken-by=janatherton
Four done,six to go. One of the things that I do when not working on my own projects, is repairing jewellery and custom design work. The pieces on the left are knotted on silk, or nylon threads and the pieces on the right are netted necklaces from South Africa that need minor repairs to the beadwork.
Another interesting repair job came into work this week. I’m trying to find out a little bit more about these pieces while I’m repairing a few missing beads. At first I thought they maybe Yoruba beadwork from Nigeria, but now I think they may Masai talking sticks from Kenya. If anyone knows, I would love to know more about them.
I have repaired the netting stitch on the first one and I will work on the other one later today and I’ll post another picture later.
I recently started working at Ayla’s Originals again, in Evanston Illinois. I worked there before my son Ewan was born. Part of my job is to redesign, or repair customer’s jewellery when it comes into the store.
This piece was one of those, when it came in it had been tied in a knot at some point in its life in order to shorten it and the sharp edges of the vintage 3-cut beads had sliced through the original thread in several places. So the decision was made to remake the necklace from scratch and to replace the knotted bundle of beads with a beaded bead. The bottom two photos show the necklace as it came in to the store and the middle photo and the mugshot of me show the finished piece after I had completed the restoration. I hope my customer likes it and enjoys wearing it!
I haven’t had a proper day in the studio for a few weeks now. Ewan no longer goes to Ellen’s, but it will be a few months before he starts pre-school as well. This week he is going to an art camp every morning, so I have an extra 3 hours to experiment and bead that I wouldn’t otherwise have had.
I have been taking time to try out a few new (to me) beadwork stitches – Hubble Stitch, Albion Stitch and Kumihimo with beads, but with varying rates of success. I love working with Hubble, which was originally developed by Melanie DeMiguel, I can see me using this one a lot as it has a lovely open texture and works up quickly:
The second one is Albion Stitch developed by Heather Kingsley-Heath, I don’t have a photo of the piece I have been working on yet, but again I want to play with this one some more, tension is important, or the the thread can show more than I want it to.
The third technique is Kumihimo, but I’m not doing so well with the tension on this one, the beads want to lie on their sides instead of flat and I just decided to quit before I chuck it across the room! I was like this with odd count peyote too, lots of frustrating attempts and samples before it finally clicked for me, I just need to stick with it.
If all else fails then this: