Wednesday Worktable

It's Cellini Spiral, still.

When last we visited my Cellini spiral, I had just started connecting the 2 Cellini spiral tubes across the center of the necklace, where I was hanging a gorgeous lampwork focal bead that, IMO, goes perfectly with the spiral:

I have continued to work on this piece on-and-off, between the Florida Road Trip for the Torch Fired Enamel Workshop; doing repairs at the shop; and normal shop duties like taxes, housekeeping, blogging, etc.
Sometime last week I finally finished the center connection to my satisfaction, and I am saving it to show you when I finish the entire necklace.

Once I finished the center, I had a new dilemma - how to create a flexible finish for this necklace? The Cellini tubes are quite stiff, and I experimented with chain, bead stringing, and sari ribbon, but nothing was really right. I decided to try a different beadweaving stitch, and then needed to figure out which one was most compatible, and how to integrate whichever stitch I chose into the Cellini tubes, with their gaping holes!

I ultimately settled on a basic spiral rope, with size 11 seed beads as the core, so that the spiral is "skinny." I wanted it to fit inside the Celllini spiral at the end, and I attached my new skinny spiral to a few beads, sank it inside the Cellini spiral, and then decreased the Cellini spiral until it closed over the new spiral, locking it in place. I chose galvanized silver 11 Delicas for the decrease, because they were the predominant bead in the Cellini spiral, and it seemed like the thing to do. At the time.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any bead caps that were the right size and shape to go over the Cellini spiral, to make the change between stitches attractive and functional. I knew that this transition between the Cellini spiral and the basic spiral was not going to be pretty, but the bright shiny silver Delicas really call attention to it. But I don't believe that any bead I had decreased with would have made a seamless transition. 

So my next mission was to figure out a way to cover up the decrease. Since beadcaps had been ruled out, I thought back to the little freeform peyote ruffled skirts that I had created at the other end of the Cellini spirals (see first picture, above) and decided to replicate them at the decrease end, as a way to cover the decrease.

I worked on these skirts all day yesterday, and by the time I had finished stitching, my planned ruffled skirts had turned into big old Elizabethan collars, but I'm OK with them. (Perhaps because I'm itching to move on to a new project?!?)

Here are several pictures of them, from different angles - it was hard to capture the essence of what I am doing here.

That small tube extending to the left is the start of the "skinny" spiral.

So, I am teaching a beadweaving class right now - taking a break here and there to type this entry - and once the class is over, I will start stitching the spiral ropes. Hope (*crossed fingers*) to finish them today, since they go pretty quickly. Then I want to stitch a toggle and bar, connect them, and be done - and when I finally finish, I will reveal the finished necklace here!