August 9, 2011

Urban Stripes ~ 4th Section

Section #4 is done and ready to be released to the group. The necklace is now long enough to begin seeing what it will look like finished. This also means that it is time to balance the patterns and color blocks so that it has a unified look. At 42" this necklace is meant to be doubled around your neck and it shouldn't be heavy color all in one spot on two sections of the rope.









Here is the detail of this section. I've added a pattern that breaks up all of the straight, parallel lines. It's something to give the eye a break. Most Urban landscapes are heavy on straight lines, but then you round a corner and there is the unexpected sign, sculpture, bridge or other unusual sight.








Well, I just had to take a break and play a bit myself. I took the pattern, redesigned it a bit, doubled it and made a bracelet in other colors that were sitting on my table. I used a couple of colors that I had thought to use as spot colors in the necklace itself. It points out that any one of the pieces of Urban Stripes would make a great necklace by itself or tweaked a bit into a bracelet. This project seems to have fostered so much creativity that it came back and bit me too.





Members Progress



Talking about creativity and waiting for the next pattern section to be released ..... Julie has a hard time waiting and keeps starting another necklace. If this keeps up, she'll have a whole flock before the project is finished. Colors are like candy - a few are never enough!








Mary Anne says her scanned changed the color of the gray background beads. However, it gives one a taste of what this might look like with a nice matte olive background.












Mariana's rope is progressing very nicely in similar shades of reds, yellows and orange against a gray background.










What great background beads. Evelyn found 8/0's that one would swear are granite. Reminds me of Fall River Mass and all of the huge old granite block mill buildings.






Doreen came up with a palette from a SoHo night photo. This is one of my new favorites. It is just so rich looking. If you look closely, you can see the two greens she can't choose between for her second spot color.







Egyptian necklace, anyone? Isn't Terri's necklace looking more and more like It was found in an archaeological dig on the Nile? What a sophisticated piece this is turning out to be.






The feedback that I'm getting on this String-Along project is great. Everyone has said that they are having fun doing this along with learning about bead crochet pattern work. It isn't all that difficult to do once you understand how things work.




Surprise, anticipation, new friendships, new beads to buy 'n try, and like-minded people to lend a hand when you get in trouble - what could be a better end of Summer project?


2 comments:

  1. It really is a fun project. One of the strangest things for me is not knowing what the next section will bring - either in design or color selection.

    To this point I've only crocheted sections 1 and 2, and I must admit that I'm not particularly pleased with my color choices. I'm not fond of ripping out and starting over, however, so I'm just going to continue and see what happens.

    And in the meantime, I'm still eying my collection of delica size 10/0 beads for a variation...
    :-)

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