I have been busy making more pieces to illustrate my soon to launch Fabergé-inspired egg workshop, and I am going to put them on the blog in fairly quick succession.
This one is one of the flat panels that I have been making. It is made of silk and wool tweed that I bought on Etsy. It is the most lovely stuff imaginable to work with because it feels fabulous in your hand with lots of drape, but it doesn’t particularly fray. I also think that the muted colours are quite reminiscent of Fabergés pastel palette in many of his pieces. Again the weave echoes his machine-worked enamelling called guilloché which I described in a previous post. The use of the beads and the way they are applied is a reference to his dedication to skill and expertise. He was adamant in public statements that the price of the stones didn’t matter; the level of craft in working them did. In this piece I used some turquoise type beads that I bought in Leicester:
The big trefoil beads have holes in the sides for stringing which I used to stitch them on, but I have learned if you want beads to be very precisely spaced like this in a repeating pattern, then it is as well to put a bit of pva behind them, let it dry and then stitch them on. Otherwise no matter how careful I am they move and spoil the effect. The beads around the edge which are there to anchor down the egg appliqué as well as to add decoration are applied with blanket stitch. Once they were all on I went over the vertical element of the blanket stitch with raised chain band which gives the knotted effect, which I think just adds a bit.
The finished piece feels really lovely. It is drapey because of the silk in the mix, but it is also heavy with beads, and the trefoils form quite a dense tactile surface. Fabergé wanted his work to delight people, and, although I am blowing my own trumpet, this piece is delightful.
