Sizing Bands, part 2

Good morning, from sunny Savannah with flowers, little lizards and falling golden pollen everywhere. CeCe is loving watching the show unfold. She isn’t so little anymore, she will be five years old this summer. Time flies.

I’m finally feeling strong again, and what a joy it is to be back at the layout table, putting our pages together. I appreciate everyone who gave me tips on how to transition to a new reality, new exercises I could do for breath, balance and wholeness, and how to pace myself in ways I didn’t even know I should be thinking about. I appreciate the good wishes from all of you more than I can say.

Also it was fantastic to receive the personal notes from people. It’s entirely my own fault that people don’t write to me now about their beading, their lives, their questions, etc., because I specifically asked everyone to let me alone while we were pushing hard to finish the books. What a terrible idea that was, because I cheated myself of the delight of hearing from you. Please forget I ever said it and email me any time you like at kate@katemckinnon.com.

Sizing Bands

In the last post, I showed two sizing bands that were built directly onto the starting line of two Geometric Spiral pieces, a bracelet (left, by Karen Beningfield) and a bangle of mine (right, still in progress). I said that I was going to needle back to the starting line of the gold on my band, and build in in the other direction as well so that it would sit flat against my wrist, and the waves of the bangle would stand out more from the center, instead of draping to one side.

Here is what that looks like so far. The more I continue to increase the width of the band (building on both sides to keep it even) the more the waves will stand outward. I will probably double the width for a really soft, stable fit. This is a technique that is easiest to do at the very beginning, when the waves, peaks, or other features are just beginning to grow.

Even at this size, the ruffles were in my way a bit as I added rounds to the gold. My favorite technique is to start new work directly onto a sizing band (so that I know it will fit me as it grows). Starting on a sturdy band like this also makes it very easy to try the beaded pieces on as they increase in depth, without having to guess how they will be situated. If you’ve ever made a spiralled, spiky, wavy, horned or peaked thing like this, then you know what I mean! They are difficult to keep sorted.

On my schedule today (in addition to working in our pages) is finishing up a photoshoot of some new work by Violetta (Vee) Pretorius, who has done some incredible spiral bangles. Look at the rich colour in this one.

Vee’s piece has enough width built up in the spiral to stand out from the arm when worn without a sizing band but it sure takes a lot of beading to get to this point. Yum.

About katemckinnon

Kate McKinnon has devoted herself to the study of how things are done, and how they could be done better.

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