From Coils of Wire to Coils of Thread

I’ve been meaning to make something fun for myself from Heidi Boyd’s ultra-cool wire book, Wired Beautiful, for quite a while and finally got around to it this week. There were many things in the book that I drooled over, but decided on the Wrapped Hoop Necklace. And, like we all often do, I wanted to switch things up a bit to make the piece feel like me, so I used steel wire and added some elongated chain links, but other than that, I pretty much followed the directions as they were in the book and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

As I was looping wire around my ring mandrel, I had an idea for doing something similar with thread (you know how one idea spawns another?). I thought chunky circles of embroidery floss would be cute hand-stitched onto fabric and since I was in need of a new hair kerchief anyway . . .I decided to try out my idea; why not?

To make this kerchief, I folded a piece of white knit fabric in half and cut out the basic shape. I then finished the edges with a zigzag stitch and then mixed up some Jacquard Neo Opaque textile paint to dye it a periwinkle color. To do this I thoroughly wet the knit fabric first, added a small amount of water to my textile color and then squeezed the diluted paint through my fabric. Squeeze, hang to dry, iron, done.

To create the cute little circles, I wound different colors of floss around different sized things such as my fingers and markers. I laid out the circles on the dyed kerchief to see how they’d look best, and then hand-stitched them down. Finally, I cut out smaller circle shapes inside of the thread circles just for fun.

Ideas for new things to make often come from things we’ve already made, so sometimes the best way to be inspired is simply to pick up a book and start making something! It beats staring at a blank canvas and waiting for an idea to pop up (though sometimes I do that just as an excuse to stare off into space . . .) But no, really, great ideas come from from doing as much, if not more, than from doing nothing. So pick up that book you ordered months ago and try something from it. Then smile when you get an idea to do something completely unrelated and then go do that.