I just discovered a fiber & mixed media jewelry competition on whip up and this paisley project seemed perfect.

project process – this is where you show off a completed project – it can be your own design or something you followed from a pattern – the point here is to describe the project and tell us how you did it – this is not a step by step tutorial – rather a description of how you felt, alterations or additions you may have made, challenges and choices you met along the way during the making of this project.

My paisley pin was inspired by a ceramic pendant I got for a friend (from an artist at etsy). I love paisley and this pendant yelled her name. Then I discovered that I had paisley on the brain. Nothing doing but to make my own version.

The first fabric paisley I made had a slight miscalculation and I couldn’t get it turned right side out. It was a little too graceful (um… too narrow). It went in to the scrap bag and I made version two. I got it all stitched and ironed and then it sat for about 2 weeks while I worked on other things. When I sat down to work on it a few evenings ago, I had just a few leftover beads in a little cup on my worktable. Rather than go get out all of my boxes of beads, I decided to let my color choices be determined by those dregs from other projects. I tend to choose analogous colors (those that sit next to each other in a color wheel) so blue with green or blue with purple would be the first colors I would gravitate to. None of those in the leftovers, so I picked amber-brown (and I love it!) I pulled a few things off that just didn’t work (sorry, blue pearls) and cursed myself for not switching out the pink thread in the sewing machine when I stitched it in the first place. A little edging of gold beads covers up most of the pink threads you can see.

I was actually so pleased with the way this turned out that I had started doing a tutorial about how I did it. I am planning to post this over the next couple of weeks (not in time for the November 15 deadline for whip up) so I decided to post it as a finished project and I will continue my tutorial from here.