I’ve been storing up news of this for ages, but finally I can share my fishy tale! I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been a member of the Beadworkers Guild for many, many years. For any of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a British charitable organisation that was set up with the aim of educating people in bead-weaving. There are a few thousand members (I believe) and we all receive a journal four times a year. This includes some projects, as you would find in any beading magazine, but all contributed by members of the guild. Plus all the guild news and some really interesting articles about different aspects of beading. Some of these are profiles of members, or reports on beading journeys, or information about styles of bead-weaving in other parts of the world. (I may not be selling this, but trust me, it is always really interesting and inspiring!). In addition, the guild organises workshops, mainly in London, plus ‘bead in’ days in different parts of the country, they publicise local beading groups and, best of all, run an annual get-together where members can spend a weekend staying at a hotel and just beading! In conjunction with this weekend, the guild runs a challenge every year. A theme is announced in about June and we have until the following spring (usually around April) to make any piece of beadwork to express that theme. There are a few more rules, about the size of the piece, the categories to enter and so forth, but nothing complicated. The top entries in each category are selected by a panel of judges and there is also a ‘readers’ favourite chosen by everyone who attends the beading weekend. There is no prize, but everyone who enters gets a certificate to mark their achievement.
Last year, the theme was ‘Underwater World.’ I wasn’t immediately struck by inspiration and I didn’t think I’d have time to bead anything that would be worth entering, so I did nothing about this until the New Year. Suddenly, I was struck by a compulsion to bead a coral reef! Normally, being me, I would have attempted something 3-dimensional and ornamental, but as I still didn’t have a lot of time, I decided to just put together a bracelet. When I was 11 years old, I was lucky enough to go on a holiday to Australia and to see the Great Barrier Reef whilst we were there. The image of the amazing colours of the coral and the tropical fish have stayed with me, so that was the inspiration behind my piece. I didn’t really have a plan when I started out, just decided to make some fish and also to play with some Twin Hole beads and I had a vague notion of fish swimming round my wrist, through coral. Maybe it’s the fact that I didn’t have a clear image in my head before I started that has contributed to the most unusual thing about this bracelet…I actually really like it! I may have mentioned this before, but I’m pretty much never satisfied with my work – whether it’s because I’m too aware of all the difficulties that I experienced in making it, or because the reality never quite matches up to the ideal in my head, I very rarely sit back and look at my work and love it…I always wish I’d done something better. However, I really like my coral reef bracelet. Also, when I created the bracelet, I decided I was just going to do this for me, not as a pattern to write up and sell, so I didn’t worry about documenting what I’d done and I just enjoyed making something and then wearing the end product.
The bracelet didn’t come anywhere in the judging for the challenge, but I was very pleased to have it back and I wore it a lot last summer. One of the occasions on which I wore it was to teach a workshop at GJ Beads. The bracelet attracted a lot of admiring comments, which were shortly followed by a request to have a pattern for it. Oh dear! I hadn’t documented this. I don’t like to disappoint, so I said I’d go home and write the pattern up, which I somehow managed to do – at least for two of the fish…I really couldn’t remember how I’d made the third one! I also thought it would be good to keep this freeform, to let other people create their own versions of a coral reef, not just replicate mine, so I outlined the techniques I had used for making the coral and assembling the bracelet, but I deliberately kept it a bit vague and wide open to interpretation.
It took me a couple of months to get around to doing all this and I had literally just finished and was about to post the pattern onto my website and start letting everyone know it was out there, when I received a surprise email from the Beadworkers Guild. It turns out that they had actually rather liked my bracelet and they were writing to see if I could let them have the pattern to go in the journal. As I hadn’t published it elsewhere, I said yes. I’ve been dying to tell everyone about this, especially the very patient and lovely people I met at GJ Beads who are probably wondering what on earth happened to my fishies…finally I can now announce that the pattern is in the January edition of the journal. Unfortunately, if you’re not a member of the BWG, you will have to wait a lot longer to get hold of the pattern, but if you want it now, then why not join the guild?!…what better excuse to learn more about beading and meet more beaders? Meanwhile, you can find more photos here and I am hoping to be able to add other people’s versions of my coral reef bracelet to the website gallery. The challenge theme for this year is ‘Myths and Legends’ and I have, just this morning, been struck with inspiration, so there will be more on this to follow…
