Because I am addicted to Trying New Things with No Prior Experience on Hard Mode At All Fucking Time, I decided to try my hand at bead embroidery in the form of a purse for the Noah Kahan function.
The Great Divide is an album so full of magnificent and nature-oriented imagery in my head, so I decided to pay homage to that using a million and one tiny little fuckass seed beads, and a handful of bigger ones.
The Inspo:
I have been drawn to the song Porch Light since I first heard it, so I wanted to make sure I encapsulated that song's lyrics in some way - hence the farmhouse lamp hanging from the top and shining a band of golden light down the purse, and the moth under said lamp.
I also decided that because of all of the bug imagery in the album (i.e. The Last of the Bugs, call me when the bugs don't die, the bugs are just starting to die, all that jazz) - I wanted to incorporate as many bugs as possible. Above the "T" in "The", we have an inch worm - towards the bottom left, an oversized beaded ladybug. We have a luna moth, a monarch butterfly, two more ladybugs, a brown moth beneath the lamp (mentioned above), two ants, and a bumble bee.
I also opted to incorporate some foliage - there are a plethora of vines, leaves (both orange/yellow/brown and green), as well as a daisy and a sunflower. And of course, the background is dirt, for said plants and bugs!
How I Did It:
It's simple really (no it isn't). I bought an embroidery hoop (8" I believe) - cut out a block of an old white bedsheet, fastened it into the hoop, drew a rectangle for the front panel of the purse, and then using (*just the center part, because i could not find the pen itself, only the tip and the tube of ink*) a half deconstructed pen, I sketched out the block letters of TGD, and roughly drew in some places for bugs and flowers and vines. I then used some thin translucent nylon beading string and a sewing needle, and would do three-four beads, make a stitch, circle back through the last bead from beneath to reinforce its placement, repeat, and did this again and again and again until i thought my eyes and fingers were both going to bleed or fall apart. About halfway through I decided to reinforce the panel with a sheet of canvas behind it, and began stitching through *both* just because of how damn heavy the beading got.
For the back panel, I used a piece of brown corduroy, did a lot more MINIMAL beading, then I sewed the two blocks together on my machine (And reinforced the edges with hand stitching afterwards). I made a liner out of a block of denim from some old jeans, and then also attached that with my sewing machine. I made the strap out of more of my brown corduroy, and then... voila! She was done!
Aaaaaand now my new addiction is beading bags. Even if this one is barely phone sized and took me 60-70 hrs of work. Goodbye!
