I've been enamoured of beaded collars since visiting Africa for the first time a few years ago. They are beautifully worked and frame the face in such a lovely way. Here are photos of some that I took at the anthropology section of the art gallery in Stellenbosch (with my pocket camera when no one was looking, hence the poor quality):
Mfengu
Thembu
Xhosa
I couldn't find any that I liked for sale in Cape Town (except for some dusty overpriced necklace-style ones at Pan African Market) so I came home disappointed. I've been thinking that I could make a modern version myself, using a detachable collar like
this one and adding some glass seed beads.
Well, I whipped up the peter pan collar in about an hour, including cutting time (give it a try, it's instant sewing gratification!). I used black linen from one of my thrift shop outings, cutting three layers and using one as interfacing. I added some cotton ties instead of a delicate ribbon as suggested in the pattern, because I thought that it might be very heavy by the time all the beads are added.
After I did my first line of beading, I looked at it and thought, "Now that can't be right.":
Yikes.
Maybe I should have done some research about beading before plowing ahead :) Because, you know, there's this newfangled thing called the Internets that lets you find information from the sky!!
After about 10 seconds of googling, I found many, many tutorials and learned all about 3-bead backstitching and couching. Now it looks like this:
Much better, but boy of boy, does it take a long time. Just doing one line of blue beads took more than an hour (granted, I was watching Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn in A Philadelphia Story and then talking to my MIL on the phone, so it may go more quickly next time.)
This is going to be a long project folks. I may end up posting the finished collar by the time winter rolls around.
