I created my Butterfly Woman Collar during a 6-week design challenge called “Secrets Revealed,” with the incredibly talented Heidi Kummli.
I didn’t start out to create a Butterfly Woman. Here is the tale of how the design was born. The photos were taken from my worktable and aren’t great, but I hope you get the idea of my creative process.
In Unit 2 of the challenge, we explored using epoxy clay to construct a unique component. The idea was to lay epoxy clay into a pendant tray, imbed your elements (beads or whatever) into the wet clay, then let the clay dry and harden.
I love repurposing old jewellery, so I decided to work with this spiky bracelet link and this single moonstone earring that I’ve been keeping for about 20 years. I cut the unwanted ring-bail off the pendant tray with my jewellery saw.
This was the result.
Now, what to do with it? It occurred to me that the constructed component looked a bit like a headdress or crown. So the headdress needed a head. I had this polymer clay face that I had made years ago. That spiky headdress above the serene face was starting to take on a very Goddess-like quality in my mind.
In Unit 3 of the challenge, we explored incorporating textiles into our designs. So I tried out a few ideas.
The butterfly embroidery patch was the clear winner. (Search Etsy for “embroidery patches”.)
Expanding the idea further, I drew a shape outline on black ultrasuede and auditioned the components, along with a mosaic brooch and glass cabochons. I thought this layout might work:
I began by tacking the butterfly patch to the ultrasuede with tiny stitches.
Then I glued down the face, positioning it so that it straddled the border between the butterfly and ultrasuede. I thought it looked best with the face slightly elevated above the butterfly.
Next, I stitched an even-count peyote bezel into the butterfly/ultrasuede and up around the face. I used black, silver, and copper beads to mimic the black, white, and orange of the butterfly. (Back-stitch an even number of Miyuki size 11 Delica beads around the base of the face. Then build up a few rows of even-count peyote stitch to form a cylinder around the perimeter of the face. Then close the cylinder around the front of the face with Miyuki size 15 seed beads then finally Czech size 15 charlottes)
Next I positioned the headdress over the face, glued it into position, and stitched an even-count peyote bezel into the ultrasuede and up around the pendant tray. (Back-stitch an even number of Miyuki size 11 Delica beads around the base of the pendant tray. Then build up a few rows of even-count peyote stitch to form a cylinder around the perimeter of the pendant tray. Then close the cylinder around the front of the pendant tray with Miyuki size 15 seed beads then finally Czech size 15 charlottes). I used beads in a bronze colour, so that if the bronze of the pendant tray showed through, it wouldn’t be noticeable.
At his point, I could see how the bezeled headdress stood up quite a bit from the ultrasuede base and thus needed blending in somehow.
I wanted to add some beads that would accomplish this blending plus would act as an extension of the headdress. For that beadwork I wanted shapes and colours that would make the eye sweep up from the butterfly to the headdress. After auditioning many shapes and colours of beads, I settled on red, black, and white Czech two-holed “Kite” beads. I stitched them down flat and positioned them so that they would mimic the upward sweep of the spikes on the headdress. Stitch, stitch, stitch, adding some size 15 seed beads in between each Kite bead.
By this time, I realised that the glass cabochons and the mosaic brooch were not going to work well in the design. They would have made things look too crowded and would have detracted from what I now thought of as Butterfly Woman.
So I trimmed Butterfly Woman from the surrounding ultrasuede, added an ultraleather backing, and stitched on an edging. [Edging: all the way around with Miyuki 11s, one bead at a time, with holes facing outward. Then around again adding 3-bead picots of Miyuki 15s.] I thought the colour scheme needed a little jazzing up, so used some lime green and purple in the 3-bead picots: green because it is the Complementary of red, and purple because it forms a Triadic with orange and green.
At this point, I was tempted to simply add some fringe and a neck chain and call her a pendant. But Butterfly Woman was pretty chunky by now, so I thought she needed something more substantial to back her up. (The epoxy clay and metal pendant tray really add weight–something to keep in mind.)
I cut an asymmetrical collar shape from ultra-leather. To one side, I stitched a filigree onto the ultra-leather. I wanted to stitch some beads into the holes of the filigree to jazz it up a little, but I didn’t want more bright red. I used some copper and purple beads and crystals in order to create colour flow with the copper and purple edge beads around the butterfly.
Then I glued and stitched Butterfly Woman onto the ultra-leather collar. I glued on ultra-leather backing to the collar, and stitched on an edging. [Edging: all the way around with Miyuki 11s, one bead at a time, with holes facing outward. For this edging, just like everywhere else, I needed to make a colour choice. Reds stood out too much, blacks blended in too much. I went with pewter and copper: 3 pewters, 1 copper, repeat. This combo added a bit of interest without being too loud or too subtle. When in doubt, go with metallic neutrals!]
I had now decided that she wasn’t getting any fringe, but she did at least need a dangle on her bottom. LOL. I choose dangle beads that I thought reflected her Bohemian look. The red/blue Czech flower bead perfectly reflected the shade of red of the butterfly and the shade of blue of her face. That little added donut bead added some needed neutral tones plus reflected what I thought of as her “Thai goddess” look.
At first, I did not intend to add more beading. I sometimes like the simplicity of the ultra-leather on its own. But in this case, the bare ultra-leather looked anticlimactic compared to Butterfly Woman herself.
Anything worth doing is worth over-doing, right?
So, I asked myself how I could add more beading really quickly (ok. relatively quickly!). I couldn’t bead into the surface at this point because I had already added the backing.
I remembered a stitch that is used in Native American beading where they stitch rows of beads onto the surface of leather. I thought I remembered it being called Lazy Stitch, so I searched YouTube, and voila. If you want to know more about Lazy Stitch, check out The Wandering Bull’s YouTube video on the subject.
Rather than stitching into the ultra-leather, as you would normally do in Lazy Stitch, I went back and forth through the edge beads that were already in place, and creating a 3-bead picot along the edges at the same time.
As I was doing this stitching, it occurred to me that it was very much like Heidi’s stitch that she calls Feathering. She covered that in the Unit 6 pendant necklace video, I believe. (Yet another reason to enrol in Heidi’s Secrets Revealed class!)
Next, I added another section of collar to the right side of the main collar, using my amended Lazy Stitch stitch technique. As I was Lazy Stitching this section, I threaded some red Rose Montees directly onto the beading thread as I went along.
I joined the two sections of collar with some pale blue crystals, selecting a pale blue that matched the blues in the face and flower dangle, in order to create some colour harmony between the butterfly and collar sections.
Now…what sort of necklace? Beads or a chain? I scrounged around in my stash of broken jewellery and found this. Oh joy, the shape and colours were perfect and it already had a chain and clasp.
We are almost done! Right? No. Now I found a snagged and loose thread and had to fix that, but I won’t bore you with those excruciating details.
Now, should I attach the neck chain with beads or simply with jump rings? Every bead that I auditioned (and believe me when I say I have a lot of them) was either too subtle or too strong, nothing was just right.
So I stitched closed jump rings into the edge beads on each side of the collar.
I figured if I did it this way, I could always change my mind later and attach some beads to the closed jump rings.
Luckily the chain had connector links already soldered into the back.
So I linked the sewn-on closed jump rings to the chain connectors with normal jump rings (doubled for security).
But that looked too plain, so back to the stash to find some small charms.
For one final decorative touch and extra security, I thought she needed a heavier lobster clasp. Plus I added an additional chain extender so that the collar would fit any neck size and neckline.
And, miraculously, Butterfly Woman was finished and ready for her photo op.
If you want to see some better finished photos of Butterfly Woman, her story is continued in this post.
P.S. Supply notes:
Needles: John James — sizes 10, 12, and 13
Threads: Toho One G (black) and Beadsmith FireLine 4lb (0.005 inches diameter) (Smoke)
Ultra-leather: from ultrafabricsinc.com
Ultrasuede: Beadsmith Ultrasuede Light