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My Beading (& Etc.) Projects

Stuart's Favor This was my first piece of bead embroidery. As I was a little unsure about how to bead shapes (what I call "contour" beading), I decided to bead a pattern by way of a graph, just like you would do with loom work.

The top piece is the badge of the Clan MacDonald, and the bottom piece is the arms of the O'Reilly family--both of which represent mine and my husband's families (except we weren't married yet when I gave him this). I chose to go with the arms of our families because I did not yet have arms of my own, but now that I do, I plan on replacing this with our own personal coats of arms.

As has been attested by THL Grizel of Middle, bead embroidery is very tough stuff. This favor has been worn on Stuart's belt while fighting and it still looks exactly as it does in this picture nearly 4 years later. I like to amaze people with the hardness of the bead embroidery; every bead is couched down and the perfectly uniform Myuki beads make for a truly indestructible piece.

St. Michael Slaying the Devil This ended up being my first attempt at contoured beading and I was very pleased with the way it turned out. The entire piece isn't but about 4" in diameter, so it was rather tricky to get it detailed enough that it wasn't just a great blob of beads.

This is where I learned that the way your drape your beads is a form of detail (practically the only form of detail in this piece), and that you have to think in terms of three dimensions and bead from front to back. For example, if we think of St. Michael as being a three-dimensional person, then the closest thing to us would be his shield, followed by his sheath, then his body, then the Devil and his sword, then his cloak, then his wings. If you bead in this order, all of your beads will lie in such a way as to convey some semblance of depth. I also did a bit of experimentation with glossy versus matte (glossy beads for things that are supposed to be the topside, matte beads for the underside bits). I don’t think that it particularly added that much to the piece, and conveying additional depth would be best served by varying the colors slightly so that the topside of something is lighter, while the underside is slightly darker.

The Arms of James de Lyon This was a gift to Stuart’s squire, James. I am progressively getting bolder with my embroidery and here combine beads with couching thread embroidery (as was done occasionally). I chose to do James’s arms in such a manner as I couldn’t figure out how to do his double-headed lion in nothing but white beads and still have it recognizable.

If I remember correctly, this was only my second attempt at thread couching (my first attempt being the abstract piece I was tutored on) and I was most pleased with the way it turned out; that silver thread was packed in as tightly as my beads are.

My Green Silk/Linen Dress This is just a bit of bead embroidery that I did on one of my earlier dresses. Around the neckline the beads were applied to a piece of trim, while on the sleeves they were sewn directly down from the hem. This was my first attempt at embroidering various-sized beads (including pearls).

I’ve actually washed this dress in the washing machine more than once and it’s still whole.

A picture of the dress "in action". You can also see my little paternoster strand that I made in a Gulf Wars class the year before. Stuart's also wearing a cotehardie that I patterned and made myself. You can also see his favor "in action".

Cross Bottany Fitchet in Green While perusing a new Fire Mountain Gems and Beads catalog, I saw a beaded cross necklace that won an honorable mention in their bead-art contest. I knew I had to have one for myself.

Cross of St. Andrew in Blue (Gifted to Father Wade) I made this cross for my high school headmaster's retirement. I worked out a lot of the kinks that I experienced with my first cross, namely with stiffening it. My own cross, while retaining it's shape, is a bit soft and floppy. I fixed this problem with the St. Andrew's Cross by brushing Elmer's glue onto the back of it after hemming the edges, but before sewing down the leather backing. I have also concluded, since making this piece, that if I am going to continue to use black leather as a backing (very likely since we have a lot of scraps of it), then I need to start beading on black fabric, not white, so that the fabric is less conspicous around the edges. In the case of this cross, I blackened the edges with a marker. I also did a better job of cutting the leather out, finding that a white tailor's pencil would actually draw on the leather well enough.

Gold and Crystal Cross (Gifted to Rev. Joeseph Manis) I made this cross for my step-brother.

Stuart's Gambeson This was a pretty big project for me--my first attempt at quilting. I will admit that I cheated and machine-quilted, but, let me tell you, that's no small thing in and of itself.

Once I got all of the material quilted, it was pretty easy to cut it out using the pattern that I had already made for Stuart's cotehardies. Finishing it, however, was a bit more laborious. I sewed it together on the sewing machine, but decided that my serger could not handle all of the layers, so with no small amount of patience, I flat-felled all of the interior seams to keep the linen fabric from raveling. If you look closely at Stuart's shoulder, you will see a black leather cord which is running through a pair of eyelets; this allows him to attach his pauldrons directly to the gambeson. I never could figure out a good way to hem something thickly quilted like that, so I fell back on using bias-tape. Because I have never had the least bit of luck applying bias-tape evenly with a sewing machine, I hand-stitched all of it down (stitching first the inside down, then the outside).

The collar is actually a joint-innovation between me and Stuart. Stuart always wears aventails with his helmets, as he hates having to wear a gorget. In the past, SCA fighting has allowed an aventail in lieu of a gorget, but when I was making the gambeson, word was coming down the pike that they would soon change the rules so that a gorget would be required regardless. Stuart asked me if I could make a collar around a metal piece, which would serve as a gorget. I said I could, but you couldn't wash that in the machine. Finally, I devised a collar with a very long buttonhole--as long as the collar was wide--directly in the center back of the gambeson. I used the cardboard from a pizza box to make templates, and then Stuart cut out two pieces of aluminum and curved them based on the templates. When he needs a gorget, he inserts the two metal pieces into the collar by way of the hole (I guess that's a gorgethole instead of a buttonhole); the two metal pieces overlap just slightly in the back so that there's no gap. When he doesn't wish to wear them (such as when he wears it as a coat when it's cold), or when the garment needs to be washed, they pull right out. And because it's in the collar of the garment instead of being strapped around his throat, Stuart finds it is much more comfortable to wear. We still think ourselves geniuses for coming up with that.

Mine and Stuart's Wedding Outfits I made everything that Stuart and I are wearing (with the exception of our shoes/boots, his pants and his belts). Stuart's hat is stuffed with dog's hair and a bit of wool. The gold lines down the front of his cotehardie and around the sleeves are 8.5 feet of beaded trim (guess who made that?). There's an additional 22" or so of beads on the end of his hat, applied in a manner similar to my green silk/linen dress sleeve above. All of his buttonholes (31 of them, I think) were hand-stitched and the rest of the garment's visible seams were hand-hemmed as well. He's also wearing a linen undershirt that I made undernearth it. He made his black belt (although I got to help do the marking and the math for the placement of his studs).

My dress is three layers, including a fitted chemise of cotton flannel with 32 pairs of hand-stitched eyelets. My gold cotehardie had something like 28 pairs of eyelets and I even made the cords for the lacing of both (and painted the cord for the cotehardie gold to make it match--it worked better than you would expect). There is a small amount of couching embroidery on my dress sleeves, featuring an outline of a hind standing in shamrocks (elements from my heraldry) on one sleeve, and a wolf sitting in thistles on the other sleeve (Stuart's arms featuring a wolf and his persona being scottish). The shamrocks and thistles both have beads as part of their design.

The real kicker, however, was my sideless surcoat. It is actually two layers all by itself--it starts with a layer made from heavy cotton ducking. I call that the base layer. The brocade was then gathered up and sewn onto the base layer. The fur came from an old fur coat which I had to piece together to get enough out of it (I had fur up my nose for a couple of weeks). It was sewn by hand onto the base layer and over the brocade. Then the broacde was all hemmed by hand (the circumference of the skirt being something like 174").

But, wait, there's more. See all of those tiny gold dots on the brocade? Those are beads. Somewhere between 13,000-14,000 beads. Each and every one of them sewn on individually by hand. I beaded on that sucoat a minimum of three hours every day (more like 5 or 6 on the weekends) for about two and a half months. I wish I had done the math beforehand; I would have not crammed 4.75 yards of 60"-wide fabric onto that surcoat if I knew how many beads that would come up to (1 bead every inch around times every 1/2 inches up, length around 40"). Still, it was wonderful brocade, featuring the green and gold of my hearldy and even shamrocks in the pattern.

You'll also notice I'm wearing my cross, although I also made my simple loop earrings and I am wearing beaded hair combs all to match.

Me and Kristen (with Mine and Stuart's Banners in the Background) Speaking of my arms, there they are on the right-side of the picture. Stuart's are behind me. I also made those banners; the figures are cut from felt and hand-stitched down.

Oh, and I also made Kristen's dress. The silver embroidery is store-bought trim (good God, when would I have had time to do real embroidery???), but I did stitch it down with clear thread (nightmare to work with--think about threading a needle with it!) so that it doesn't LOOK like it was store bought.

Nanny Peardon and My Red Wool Cloak Nanny Peardon, on the right, donned my cloak for the wedding (as she was cold). It is a "traveler's cloak", meaning it has something approaching sleeves in it. The sides are cut something like angel's wings and the lower part sewn up, with the upper part left open--these form the sleeves. You can see the buttons on it; those were my first attempt at making cloth buttons (and hand-stitching buttonholes too, for that matter). I used a quater as a template and the cloak itself ended up with 32, with an additional 7 on the separate hood. It is all lined in fake fur.

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