03/09/2024
WIP, "Taos Mesa".
The black element you see in the first photo is the bead-embroidered composition I stitched to a felt backing This photo shows the felt back of the beaded focal and the free-form pe**te-stitched cuff I am composing to match that beaded turquoise focal.
I'm using a lot of little 15 beads in the center of what will be a wide cuff. This is pe**te done in a "lengthwise" stitch, into which I have incorporated a few accent beads that will echo the colors and shapes in the focal center. I am using 2-drop Pe**te with 15s, for the most part. Pretty tiny.
Photo #2 shows the beaded focal, turned face up, just above the in-progress beaded cuff. It's nice and supple because I am using those tiny 15s and Delicas with a good tension. Even incorporating other size beads, it stays pretty supple.
Photo #3 shows where the focal element will eventually be stitched to the background of the Pe**te cuff. I am now essentially putting that focal in that position dozens of times a day, in order to guage placement as I compose beads behind and around it. Still not attached . . . but I'm imagining where ever little accent is going to go, and then the beads are telling me where they will go, against my wishes.
You might notice that I have already started to built myself a nice little organic hole in the beaded cuff. I'm creating negative space. Just some little empty space that will show the skin underneath the beaded strip. I like to build what appear to be tears or rents in kind of a tapestry-like effect.
Beading is engineering. Tiny engineering. The challenges with a freeform pe**te background for this cuff are to make it look like it always lived together and everything is integrated into a whole composition and all the variable beads will be talking to one another. I will eventually sew the focal shield onto the cuff so that it seemed to miraculously grow there. The irregular placement color changes, with the negative spaces, will (I hope) look like the sands of time blowing over the sandstone bluffs. Hahahhaa.
In "freeform" pe**te, there are kind of design rules or expectations and freeform is presumed to have some assymetry and unexpectated negative space and serendipitous placement of contrasting elements (could be contrasting in size, shape, degree of reflectivity). There is no "pattern" but that doesn't mean there is no composition. It's more like the composition comes out of the basic selection of the materials and emerges from the beading experience of picking up one piece after another.
I'm movin' and groofin' on this cuff.
