Can this Necklace be Saved?

There was a column in the Ladies Home Journal I remember reading in my youth back in the Stone Age (the late 60s early 70s) titled "Can this Marriage be Saved?" which has inspired today's ruminations.

I can't remember if it was the first or the second time I was making a piece from a specific pattern (probably the second - I have a theory about the second time you try to follow a bead pattern, but more on that another time), but whatever time it was, I used the wrong size spike beads.

Here's the original design by Sabine Lippert titled “Handle with Extra Care” that uses 7 x 17mm Czech spike beads.  You can find it here.

 Well, in putting together my beads for this piece, I pulled out instead the 18 x 12mm bruisers and couldn't understand why the pattern wasn't going the way it should. It kinked and folded and would not behave. I had plans to make a necklace out of it, omitting the spikes along one side so the wearer wouldn't spear themselves in the chin, but it wouldn't lay right.

So I turned it into a round pendant, added a bezeled rivoli, crocheted beaded straps and lo! this beadwork was saved from the dreaded Drawer of Unfinished Projects. YAY!

Cross Stitch and Cross Fertilization

I am besotted with Cubic Right Angle Weave (better known in the beading universe as CRAW). For I while, when I first encountered the stitch, I just made ropes using it, varying the size and type of bead. But one summer, once school was out, I got the idea of turning corners, or using Cubic Right Angle Weave to make Right Angles! 

Such a small thing, but it had a tremendous creative result.  I found I could think about CRAW as being like cross stitch (which was my first stitching obsession back in the 80s) and it was easy to count by units when designing: one square, one CRAW stitch.

Here is one of the first CRAW pieces I created using PC Stitch, a cross stitch software program (which I have also used for creating loomwork designs).

As you can see, I also figured out how to add a rivoli crystal or two - CRAW converts easily to peyote stitch. The trick for me was to create a web on the reverse side so the crystal would be firmly supported and not wiggle around. Or push through the back and fall out!  

The smaller crystals are Swarovskis in sew-through settings, another component that is very CRAW-compatible.