I have done something creative lately

Over the last couple of weeks, I've worked on this fabric necklace. This started with the flower. I saw the idea of taking the silk flower and sewing it to a felt base in one of the Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines. (Unfortunately, I don't remember which issue as I have every one of them and almost all of the Somerset Studio magazines AND numerous other Somerset publications AND lots of art and craft books. I'm not addicted to buying them. NO, really! I'm sure I could go months and months without purchasing an art magazine or book if I really wanted to!.... Let's hurry and go back to the original subject, shall we.) I had also seen in another of the CPS issues where this artist had made these lovely necklaces with fabric tubes, beads, and other goodies. Again, I can't recall which artist or issue, but if I do run across it again, I'll be sure to post and point you toward the articles/artists. Being as I still haven't gotten up the nerve to set up my sewing machine to try to conquer my sewing machine phobia, I wanted to do adapt this project to what I could do by hand.



The flower itself, has purple, pink and white petals that you can't really see in the scan of the entire necklace, so I made another of it all squooshed up where you can see the under layers. If I were younger, prettier, more photogenic, and had my hair combed and make up on, I would have modeled the necklace in one of those self-portrait shots. Since I'm none of those things, you are gonna have to settle for these scanned views. For the necklace part I used various torn fabric strips, fibers, and ribbons tied or sewn together accented with beads, buttons, or fabric bows.

I actually got up the nerve to wear it yesterday. You know when you make something like this, there is always the fear that other people will just look at it and see a mess of torn fabric. I have that same feeling about everything I make really. Emily was home visting yesterday and she reminded me of what I would always tell them, which is "why are you worried about what other people think?". Yeah, sometimes your own words get thrown back at you, lol! So, I wore it with a pink top, pink linen cropped pants and a blue jean jacket. I got a couple of compliments and some second glances. So I'm sure there were those wondering, "what the heck?" But, oh well, I like it.

Edited 4/9/09 Ok, I found the respective articles that provided the inspiration. The flower is from the Sew Somerset book of Winter, 2009 and is found on page 19 with the artist being Leigh Houston. Also on that page is a necklace not done like mine, but where I got the idea for sewing my flower on the type necklace I was doing. The artist for the flower and bead necklace is Gaye Collins. My fabric necklace version was inspired by an article in Cloth, Paper, Scissors, Issue 17, March/April 2008, pages 66-71. The artist featured in this article is Tina Givens and her necklace on page 69 is most like the one I did. I didn't even have the article with me when I was working on the necklace, so I am surprised at how much like it this one it turned out to be. My subconcious memory is better than I thought, lol! Like I said, she uses fabric tubes that I didn't use because I was avoiding the sewing machine.