Ok, I’m back to finish up the beading on the Blue Wizard Santa. The crystal is attached (Can you see the bumper bead on top of it?) and the beading hanging loop made and attached. Now I needed to add some more beads to his body before putting the ornament together.
I scattered little Mill Hill beads on his robe, in his beard and on his hat. I did not stitch them down--I just put the ornament on a tray and scattered beads here and there over the Santa, trying to decide where they looked best. Since the wizard already has metallic blue and silver dots all over his robe, beads there looked odd.
I liked the thought of beads in his beard and hair but my beads are blue, not silver, and the color contrast between dark blue beads and grey hair didn’t please me. So I ended up simply adding a row of little dark blue Mill Hill beads to his hat above the row of silver metallic stitches.
Next, my loop. I have a card of beading wire (size #24) that is very thin silver. (See the photo above.) I cut a long 6 inch piece (with my paper cutting scissors since metals dull embroidery scissors quickly) to make my hanger loop and threaded a variety of small blue beads from the mixed bag of sizes with my Mill Hill Petite Glass Beads #40020 added at random until I had enough beads to bend the wire to make a loop. The beads were strung along the loop and I had two long lengths of bare wire in my hand. A quick twist of the wire and the beads were held in place.
Then I stuck the two thin wires through a group of larger beads, starting with a bead just a little larger than the Mill Hill beads, then a slightly bigger bead, a larger one still, etc. The final bead at the bottom was a large tubular one. (These are called bugle beads in the beading world.) You’ll see how the beads grow in size if you look at the picture of our Santa ornament above. This can be done with thread, of course, but I thought wire might be a little more durable. You just have to have wire small enough to go through Mill Hill beads and bottom beads with large enough holes that two pieces of wire will fit.
Next, coil the remaining wire below the beads and stitch the coil firmly to the backside of your needlepoint. This is done before the ornament is put together. Make the wire as secure as you can and the bugle bead as close to the top of the wizard’s hat as you can. Now assemble the ornament. You may find as I did that now the loop is a little higher above the wizard’s hat than it was originally and that the crystal you attached firmly is now a bit wobbly. Beads are very wiggly things. You may think you have them attached securely but they are masters of fooling you! As I started to add beads to the seam, I took care of this problem by clustering a few of the larger beads behind the loop and that stabilized it. I did the same thing with the crystal.
The edging went on next. There are several ways to attach beads to a seam. I just picked up various sizes at random, using more of the small Mill Hill Beads than any other size and color, and scattered them all along the edge, putting a few a little forward, clustering some in the back, etc. This gives a randomness to the trim that I liked. I forgot to say I used one ply of my overdyed navy blue Needle Necessities cotton floss to attach the beads. I started at the top of the hat and worked my way down the right side, then when I got to the bottom edge, I started making fringe with assorted blue beads. I stacked the beads, working from a larger bead to smaller ones, using the bumper and doubling back techniques to end off the fringe. Once I put fringe all across the bottom, I worked my way back to the right side again adding some of the small Mill Hill beads in front of the fringed edge with a few of the smallest navy beads from the assortment pack thrown in. I put a row in front of the fringe to help hide the seam. The fringe alone didn’t do that. Once the bottom fringe was finished and the row set in front of it, I worked my way up the left side and ended at the top of the wizard’s hat.
Finishing isn’t that hard. It just takes time and some manual dexterity. My finishing is not as good as what a professional finisher can do but small ornaments turn out ok and it saves money I’d rather spend on framing, something I can’t do for myself (although it isn’t hard as long as you have access to materials and tools that make the job better and easier).
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
