I’ve nearly finished the beading on the bodice of my dress. Just a bit more chain stitch and some sequins to add. I’m very pleased with how it is going. I am using the French embroidery beading technique as shown in Maisie Jarratt’s book “French Embroidery Beading: How To Bead”.
The late Maisie Jarratt was an Australian beader who taught Karen Torrisi, who was one of my co-tutors at Beating Around the Bush last year. I’d love to take one of Karen’s classes, as she is extremely talented, and also trained at Lesage in Paris. Oh, if there were only more hours in the day and more days in the week!
The fabric is on a frame, so as to keep it all nice and flat, with no puckering. I traced the design onto the fabric with yellow dressmaking carbon so that it would stay put while I stitched, but be completely coverable. I have used Decora rayon thread because it was nice and shiny and I already had the right colour!
The beads are mostly Maria George delica beads, and the accent blush pink ones are just something I’ve had in my beading boxes for ages, so I have no idea what they are. The beading is around the neck edge of the bodice. I’ve had a lovely time doing it, as it grows quite quickly, and looks very sparkly.
Later edit: I forgot to mention that there are also Swarovski crystals in the petal-like shapes. Sorry about that!
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
This is looking really lovely, Yvette – really delicate work!
Thanks Rachel. My girls keep coming by as I am working on it and saying how beautiful it looks. It sort of feels like a real family project as we are all enjoying every step of the process.
How beautiful, Yvette. Are you attaching the beads with a tambour hook? That is a technique that I would like to learn.
No, it uses a sort of whip stitch to attach them. For anyone who knows anything about this sort of thing, they can probably tell that this is worked by a left-hander because of the slant of the beads. Tambour beading just sounds so difficult to me!