faux shibori bracelet

I was intrigued recently when trawling the internet looking at jewellery to find that one of the latest crazes in bead embroidery is incorporating shibori silk ribbon with the beads to create some wonderful jewellery. Now, bead embroidery, for some reason that escapes me, is not something that I have done a great deal – odd when you think that I trained as an embroiderer!
I thought I would try my own shibori bracelet as I loved the effect and its good to try something different every now and again. However when I found a supplier of the beautiful hand dyed silk ribbon I was put off by the cost – if I was to make a piece of jewellery using this then by the time I’ve finished and priced it I knew the cost would make a very expensive product and hard to sell so I looked for an alternative. Using a piece of hand dyed habotai silk that I had hidden away in a box of ‘bits’ I made the resulting bracelet. I found that the fabric does not have to be cut on the bias, (as the ribbon is), just make the silk double the width of the bracelet and a little longer. I sewed the silk to the ends of pelmet vilene turning under a small hem to hide the raw edges and then folded the silk and caught down the folds with tiny stitches using ordinary sewing cotton. These stitches were later hidden with the bezelled rivoli’s and other beads that were back stitched in place. I am pleased with the result and of course I am now thinking of all the other lovely fabrics that I could incorporate into my jewellery…red velvet for Christmas perhaps?