Day 9- Necklace with Concentric Circles

3/4/14

While sorting my materials yesterday I came across beautiful cerulean pebbled leather and noticed that an assortment of my crystals were the same shade of blue. I thought it would be interesting to use an almost invisible tulle over the crystals to hold them on the leather and I found a light grey piece that worked quite well. I experimented with machine sewing the tulle around the crystals which proved to be very difficult because you can't get close to the crystal, even with a zipper foot. 

I decided to try a method where the stitch would be further away from the crystal, by doing a double layer of leather underneath in a contrasting shade. My inspiration for the layered circle shape came from a Kandinsky print my grandmother recently gave me; one of his circle pieces. I love the 3D element to the 2D piece that comes from the color variation of the rings. 

Squares with Concentric Circles, Wassily Kandinsky

I cut circles from a reddish brown leather and smaller circles from the cerulean leather, placed a donut shaped Swarovski crystal in the center and tulle on the top and bottom. I carefully stitched around the second leather ring to hold the layers in place. Then I cut the circle elements apart. 

I crocheted four circles in an alpaca yarn in a color slightly redder than the leather and one row larger. 

It's easier to see the tulle in this photo; the blue leather and crystal are not stitched, only held on by the tulle.

After stitching the leather pieces to the crocheted pieces, I added another crystal at the bottom of each circle, and attached a copper chain to the back. 

Necklace, alpaca yarn, copper chain, leather, Swarovski crystal

In the morning I'll check the poll to see what materials I'll be using for Day 10! Voting is open until 9:00 AM EST on 3/5.

xo,
Arielle