Beads, Thousands of Beads

I decided to take a break from working on the doll this evening to concentrate on her clothes for a while. There is a lot of embellishment to be done on the clothes so I know that it is going to take a long time.

I have decided to make her cloak the first thing to be worked on. It's not really a cloak in the accepted sense, more a beautifully shaped sleeveless coat. I have decided to put a row of beads around the coat and with this in mind I have started work and have completed about four inches in half an hour. Not exactly speed sewing but I am getting quicker as I progress.

The most difficult part about it all is threading the needle. There are special needles for applying beads. The beads have relatively small holes so a standard needle cannot be used because its eye is too big to go through the hole in the bead. I wear glasses which have varifocal lenses so managing to line up the thread with the eye of the beading needle has proven to be pretty difficult. It took me about 10 minutes to thread the needle for this first run of beads. Fortunately I cut myself a reasonable length of thread with which to work and I will get approximately a quarter of the way round the cloak with it.

If things go well this evening I am hoping to complete the beading on the cloak. That will be two items of her clothing completed because I did the embroidery required on her bodice earlier today. I will still have her bloomers, skirt, overskirt, jacket and her shoes to work on, but her wardrobe is progressing.

Bendy Girl asked me in a comment how I was feeling. BG, my cold seems to be getting worse instead of better, but I am keeping myself well wrapped up and hoping that it will be gone soon. I think that it is probably dragging on because I am a bit run down although it is possible that the additional antidepressants that I was prescribed a few weeks ago may be responsible because one of the possible side-effects of them is a reduced ability to fight infections. We'll just have to wait and see.