Deco Nights

by Janet Schnittger
(Dayton, Ohio, USA)

This is a hand-stitched, bead embroidered necklace – a truly one-of-a-kind piece.

The process to make one of these necklaces is quite time consuming. First, the cabochon was glued to a piece of suede, and then surrounded by individually hand stitched seed beads. After this was completed, I begin stitching the embroidery, one to two beads at a time, until the design was completed. I started with a particular sketched out idea for this piece, but ended up in a whole new direction!

After the embroidery was finished, I carefully cut out the piece and added a backing of another piece of suede. Then I laid out more beads and proceeded to add fringe. I completed this piece using a simple, unassuming flexible brass neck wire. This piece took me a total of approximately 10 hours to create over a 2 month period.

I named this piece "Deco Nights" because it reminds me of architecture of the Art Deco era, a period in architecture and art I am particularly interested in. The colors comprise of rich blues, royal purples, brilliant turquoises and beautiful aged gold and bronze. The central gemstone is Purple Fluorite. Surrounding this is semi-precious Chrysocalla, Miyuki and Czech seed beads and crystals.

The neck wire on this piece measures 18" and the front piece measures 8.5” x 3”.

Janet Schnittger
RetroDog Designs