Since I am not a quilter, I decided to do my own variation of beading surface: I will be working on sheets of canvas. This is the regular kind of canvas, but, rather than stretched and mounted, it comes in tear off sheets just like sketching paper. I love how it stands out in my mixed media pieces, with the paint brighter and the surface raised, and it's durable and doesn't fray at the edges. I wanted to try beading on it. So far so good.
Here are some smaller rectangles that I cut from the main sheet. On one sheet I painted a blue-green-purple gradient with acrylic paints and paint spray, before I cut it up. The other I left white and I am planning on beading on it with all black beads: matte, shiny, hematite and some less traditional shapes as well as standard seed beads.
Last I have a Gelli printed piece of fabric that I want to both bead on and attach some of the painted canvas to. But I'm going to let this mellow a bit until I have several techniques to try on it.
So far I've chosen this range of beads for working on the colored backgrounds, and
this assortment of black beads. I have all this in one of my travel packs, ready to grab when I know I will be stuck in the car for a while, or to work on after a hike. I have lots of little bead containers and cups, though I suspect my car and my bed will be littered with escapee beads by the time I am done.
So I did all this prep work to produce this little bit below. First I did a row of individually attached beads, then I did a second row and re-entered alternate beads, added 4 small beads, and re-entered the next bead. I have been using a larger needle to poke holes in the canvas where I want to bring the needle up or down. I've discovered that this isn't really necessary, my beading needle will penetrate the canvas where ever I want it to, but under good light the canvas threads can be counted and I like the precision and the fact that there is less wear and tear on the canvas if I am not constantly poking it while looking for the ideal location. There is a little row of outlier beads along the left. These are large central bead, then 2 beads attaching to it from slightly down, go through the central bead and attach 2 more beads before going back under the canvas. I am thinking it would be most cool to make a framework of beads spaced further apart and use them to make lacework of added small beads, or of floss or perl threads. A kind of couching where the holding stitch is created first.
Here is a closeup. I can see that my cell phone camera doesn't know what to do with the high contrast between black and white, so it distorts the details a lot. I will be trying to improve the filters that I use to process these photos to see if I can make it more clear and less distorted.
On to the next variation....
The work above is related to Lyric Kinard's online beading workshop, Bead It Like You Mean It, part 2. (the link is to her general workshop page because when I click on the specific class I go directly to my subscription page). The workshop is open now and you can work at your own pace; she will monitor you work and provide comments if you submit your progress.
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