Bead Weaving, Bead/Fiber Combination, Projects
Woven Silk and Crystals
If you weave, whatever you weave, you love the materials with which you weave. After all, those materials are the bricks that make your weaving and if those bricks are crumbling and dull, what you weave will embody those traits. Materials that are rich and filled with color and texture and body will make your project sing. Hence, it’s no surprise that I get excited when I wield my paint brush over skeins of silk or receive a box of materials in the mail. Admiring that hand-painted silk once it has dried and put on skeins gives me the same feeling as receiving, as I recently did, a box of crystals. The goal is of course to make something worthy of the materials. It doesn’t have to be an intensely complicated long-term project. It can be something very simple that elegantly incorporates the gems and threads.
To that end, I made the following two woven projects which I would like to share with you.
Okay, you’ve seen the hand-painted silk a million times but I am going to post a picture of them anyway. The crystals are new, at least to me. I have frequently used size 4mm fire polish crystals in my work. This is the first time I’ve used the more delicate size 2mm fire polish crystals. I kept my color choices simple: a couple of versions of gold and just clear crystals.
