Spun a web4 me: 4th Annual Challenge of Color Hosted by Erin from Treasures Found

This is the 4th Annual Challenge of Color hosted by the gracious, very talented and generous Erin Prais-Hinz on her blog TreasuresFound; my second yearof participating and a wonderful feast for the eyes blog hop. This year we were asked to pick a palette from ColourLovers. We could also play a word game with the palette to give it a name. I chose to pick an already created palette.

Here is the palette I chose from the ColourLovers web site. It is called Southwestern Sunrise.

seems my color brain still gravitates to the land of my childhood: the southwest

This marvelous palette was created by Sunmeadow

You can view it in its full glory on ColourLovers here

With this bright and varied palette I made what I call a free form herringbone stitch double wrap bracelet. I say free form since there is no specific color pattern to my piece. I randomly stitched the bracelet with my Southwestern Sunset palette of seed beads and twin beads strewn on my beading tray. Some years ago I found little lazy susans that had a cloth surface that is perfect for containing seed beads and for picking them up with a beading needle.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find any like them since, but I have quite a few since I bought up a bunch for beading classes I teach.

Although peyote stitch is my favorite off loom beading stitch, I really enjoy the challenge and symmetry of herring bone stitch. It is always worked in pairs which means you can do some fun things when you think in pairs. For example it was fun using some of the new twin beads on this bracelet since one twin is equal to 1 pair of seed beads.

Twin Beads I used in my bracelet

I also enjoyed the challenge of making the clasp an integral part of the bracelet since making the external button hole always puts me in a stitching tizzy and usually ends up too tight!! The pair structure of the herring bone made it easy to use this as a way of creating a negative space for the button.