And pearls!

At this point, posting pictures is going to get a little repetitive, but I'll try anyway, if my phone cooperates. With a couple of nights of solid work, I've now got one complete strip and a second one with all the cord and half the beads applied.

Even more bling arrived in the mail yesterday, so the variety of beads has gone up substantially. Now the pattern is garnet, grey pearl, garnet, crystal beads, garnet, gold beads, garnet, tiger's eye, garnet, green pearls, garnet, small gold beads, garnet. It's difficult to get a photo of the whole length, but I like the beading pattern. There's enough regularity with the pearls and garnets that it's all unified even with the variety of materials.

Pretty soon, I need to start thinking in more detail about how this is going to interact with the body of the garment. My plan is that the long strips I'm currently working on will be the vertical panels on the front and back, so now I need to work on the bars of the Ys. I'm assuming the total requirement will be four strips - two long ones and two short ones back and front. Hopefully if that's off it's that we need less, not more. I don't think pieceing this would be fun or very easy to disguise. On the plus side, the way I've been working, the motifs are separate, so it would just be a matter of cutting at the narrowest point and securing the ends of the cords.

I've also been having conversations with Annetje, and we think that the best plan is to use a narrow band of red velvet so that it ends up being about 5 inches wide. That means there will be 3 inches of gold trim, and an inch of red velvet on either side.

Onwards!