Shiny, Quilty Jewelry

As you may have noticed from the blog, I've been working on quilting much more than I've been working on jewelry.

Part of this is due to the fact that I've been participating in my local quilt guild as web manager, but also part of it is due to the feeling that I am actually moving forward on many of my projects.

Have no fear, however! No matter how many projects I finish, I find I seem to start almost as many, so the project list doesn't get any shorter (although it does have different projects.)

This quilt is one of my "new-ish" quilting projects. It came from our box block exchange project last year. My only criteria for fabric choice was "no blue", because, silly-ly enough, I wanted a challenge in putting it together. Finally I decided on this chevron sashing, but is it too much? Does it distract from the blocks, or does it unify the whole thing? Anyone who has an opinion on it, please let me know!

I got a bit of a shock last week went one of my most consistent customers said "of course, I'll be up to look at the new jewelry at Thanksgiving."

And, of course, while there's some, there's not as much as I'd like, so I've been working on some new stuff (although probably not for her! Luckily, she didn't get to see the new Spring stuff when we did our fundraiser, so even though we've been slow at creating new pieces over the summer, there are pieces I'm sure she'll like.)

However, May 2010, my quilt guild is having a show, and they're allowing members to sell stuff on consignment. Well, I could never make my living out of quilting (I'm waaaaay too slow!) but I thought I'd develop some quilty jewelry. These will be pendants when they grow up, and they'll be put on kumihimo necklaces. I have some other ideas for earrings that will be so cute, I think I'll save them until after New Years.

I'm hoping with a couple of good nights sleep and some productive days, I should be able to start the photography for the web site and for the etsy shop both of which have suffered from my pre-occupation with quilting.

So sayonara for now!

Scarcely No. 8 and 20 gauge Kumi

After a summer of trying to get quilting projects done, I decided to start working on my kumi projects again.  

As I may have noted before, started out I using cotton embroidery floss to make most of my braids.  However, I have collected several nice colors of silk and some lovely bamboo threads, so I thought I'd gear up to work with them by switching to perle cotton.

Now, I first worked with perle cotton when I moved to the marudai, and I didn't like it because it had a twist.   However, it turns out that THAT was no. 5 perle. After a couple people on the kumi2 mailinglist recommended No. 8 (which, like larger numbers of wire, is thinner), I thought I'd try that. It is still twisted, but you can use multiple threads to give an appearance similar to kumihimo silk (although not nearly as thin as that!)

The fun thing is that compared to embroidery floss, No. 8 perle works up fast because the scale is so much larger. When I talk about 3-4 strands of embroidery floss, I mean, you take the 6-strand length apart and use 4 of of those...it's TEENSY!  On the other hand, four strands of No. 8 perle cotton I can see without my glasses, thus making any problems with the braid really obvious early on.

The big problem for me about No. 8, at least in my neck of the woods, is that it seems to come in white, ecru, off-white, eggshell, light tan, light ecru... well, you get it, not many colors at all.   When I came across some in actually non-white colors unexpectedly, I bought all I could, which included red, blue and black (and white, but no ecru :>)

But other than playing with No. 8 perle (which someone described as "shimmery" but I didn't get that effect) I started noodling around with some 20 gauge copper wire.

I've wanted to play with kumi and wire, but I had so many more projects I wanted to try first that I never actually gave it a shot. When I found some pre-cut  scrap wire, I decided to try a very simple 4 strand braid.

Unbeknownst to me (at that point), very thin wire is recommended for kumi with wire, and then it behaves a bit like thread. Using a bigger wire, means that I did not need the Marudai OR the disk/plate. This is okay if you're only using 4 strands, but I think I'd like some references if I work with more strands.

For my next experiment, I have cut 8 strands 22g colored copper wire, but I still need to contemplate how to kumi without the disk or marudai but still with some reference.

More later!