For the 2015 Battle of the BeadSmith I created a necklace depicting space. It was woven using what I call "random free form". I developed this style after attempting to work traditional free form peyote stitch, a process that uses varying sizes of seed beads to add dimension with open areas into the weaving. It turns out that is something I an incapable of doing. After about four stitches I ended up switching between peyote, herringbone, square stitch. Plus, for some reason my tendency seemed to be to want the work to sit flat. Using different sizes of seed beads enabled me to create curving rows of two bead wide herringbone that form fit around my accent beads. I made a collage of space images and printed them out to use as a guide to stitch by. Usually I bead without any regard to the time spent, but for this project I set a timer each day as I worked.
This was one of the few pieces I have made that was worked with minimal added components. I wrapped a few Swarovski rivoli to represent the brightest stars, and also incorporated many Swarovski crystals to add sparkle. I used the Swarovski pearls as distant planets.
I used a four sided herringbone to create the lines around the crystals. The line was not shaped the way i would have liked but I was running out of time in my alloted two months so I just kept stitching.
The necklace took a total of 133 hours. It has a a wonderful fabric like feel and is incredibly lightweight which makes it fun to wear. The crystals really sparkle in the light giving the impression of stars twinkling in the night sky.
This necklace is one of the favorites of all I have made.