Hi ! Here comes a lesson which will give you a few hints on how to plan an embroidery piece, from the simple ones to more complex neck pieces.
Start with making a selection of the beads you’ll want to use. I recommend that you check out this article on how to use color to make unforgettable pieces of jewelry here. It should help you make a nice selection of colors that will complement and highlight each other. After all, given the time you might end up spending on your embroidery, it’s worth making sure the result will be as good as your expectations.
You can see on the right a couple of bead selections I made, with complementary colors: in one case, a teal, turquoise, anis and fuchsia color palette; next to it a purple, yellow and orange color set; in the last one, a khaki green and red harmony.
Once this is done, lay your structural pieces (e.g. the cabs, stones and biggest beads) on a white piece of paper, or even better, on the ultra-suede itself, so that you can see how the background color affects your transparent beads. Don’t hesitate to make several tries and take pictures to compare ! You can also start with a drawing on paper.
If you’re at a loss for inspiration, two shapes I often use are the triangle, pointing downwards, that allows you to have one big cab in the middle and 2 or 3 smaller cabs in each corner; and the oval, which allows you to more or less evenly position beads around a central cab.
Once you have chosen the design you want, you need to plan on your ultra-suede. In the example I’m using, I decided for a triangular shape. I’m starting with the symmetry axis, which I trace with a pencil on the fabric. Then, I trace the contours of my cab and I position the other pieces to get a feel for how they should be positioned, in relation with the symmetry axis and the cab. Which is how I also trace the other two lines (see picture below), that I’ll use to position the other elements in the top corners. I’m not tracing the contours of the smaller cabs yet, because once the central cab is set in peyote, I’ll want to make sure I have the right spacing between the peyote rows and the cab (see the tutorial there to see what I mean about getting the right spacing)The other beads I’m planing to use aren’t structural for the piece, so I’m not tracing them.
So, now your piece is planned, you can go ahead with the embrdoidery itself ! Get started with peyoting the cab by following the tutorial here !