Very proud teacher!

This evening was Kathy's last lesson until we start up again in September and I just wanted to post to say how proud of her I am!

When Kathy first came to me about 6 months ago she'd done a bit of stringing and had attended a couple of day courses where she learned to bezel a rivoli and add a plain bail to loop onto a necklace.  She'd bought hundreds of beads, books and patterns but for some reason couldn't follow them.  Since then we have learned lots of different stitches (including flat peyote!) and I said that she should find a piece that she liked but wouldn't usually dare to attempt.  I wanted her to find something that she aspired to but didn't quite feel ready for.  She went straight to Creating Crystal Jewellery with Swarovski by Laura McCabe as she's quite the magpie!  She chose a piece that was made with a rivoli and some cosmic squares but she didn't like the spiral rope.  For some reason she really dislikes the look of spiral rope so we started on the pendant and once that was done, we would look at which kind of rope she would like instead.

Here's the pendant:

She used a volcano rivoli with volcano and light vitrail cosmic squares.  She started to add the picot round the secondary squares but decided that she didn't like them and wanted it to get plainer the further away from the rivoli so that your eyes are drawn in and then out again.  At first she really worried about deviating from the pattern but I said that it was excellent that she felt she could personalise it - it is an important step in learning how to design jewellery for yourself after all!  (As an aside - the charlottes are actually a pale  AB metallic green but look white because I was using my phone camera and no natural light!)

After much thinking of all the ropes we had learned, she decided to plump for twisted herringbone, a wise choice I thought!  She did remarkably well and started off two ropes in a lesson and finished them as her homework.  Today, in our last lesson until September, she did a loop and toggle closure and made sure all her ends we securely woven away and cut off.

Here's the full finished necklace:

Didn't she do fabulously?!  I can't quite explain how proud of her I am, she has come such a long way in her grasp of different stitches, changing from one stitch to another and most importantly, the importance of tension!

I asked her what she was looking at doing come Autumn, and she's asked me to find a pattern made of lots of components so she can do homework.  I have a design brewing in the back of my brain that I think she will like - it's lots and lots of little circles (inspired by Jean Power's Freeform Cuff but as a necklace, asymmetric and using lots of different types of circles, mainly in peyote but with the odd sparkly rivoli) so I shall let it brew a little longer and then do a few rough sketches before putting needle and thread to beads!  Luckily I have 3 months to make and then write up instructions after photographing it and sending her a picture! 

And yes, this is an hurrah as it seems my muse is back too!  Wooop!

Teaching Beading

I love teaching people to bead and really enjoy seeing their confidence grow and their design style emerge alongside their increased technical ability.  I feel a mixture of pride and sadness when they no longer need me any more; sadness because I enjoy getting to know them and our conversations (sometimes they're more like therapy sessions!) whilst beading, and pride because they no longer need me!  I am really lucky that my students keep in contact with me and they will often pop round for a cuppa and an evening of beading together.
 
Every Tuesday I teach a lovely lady called Kathy beading.  She is relatively new to it but tries very hard and has come on in leaps and bounds over the two months I have taught her.

She came to me after having taken a few day classes and had bought swathes of beads but could not follow patterns very easily, nor was her tension very good.  The first thing I taught her was a different way of holding her beadwork so that she could maintain tension (and nagged her an awful lot about it too!) and then we moved on to various stitches.  So far I have taught her all the basic permutations of herringbone stitch - especially herringbone rope and twisted herringbone rope, right angle weave and we have done a few simple beaded beads, both supported and unsupported. 

Last lesson she was telling me about a friend of hers who us undergoing a second bout of chemotherapy for breast cancer so I suggested we make something for her to cheer her up a little.  Kathy talked about how this lady's faith was really important to her so we had a little brainstorm and decided to make a very simple cross in right angle weave.

This is the basic pattern I came up with.  An extraordinarily simple right angle weave cross in two layers and then joined along the edges as she struggled with cubic RAW, then stiffened with seed beads around the edge.

Kathy chose to do hers in shades of deep red to put on a simple rope of strung garnets.

The other side is a slightly lighter shade of red and she has to add the seed bead edging for her homework to stiffen it up.

I hope she is proud of herself for doing this and that it not only cheers her friend up, but that it brings her solace whilst she's undergoing the chemo.