Lyn and Annie’s First Quarter Jewelry Challenge has been in the back of my mind while I have been busy with other things. I had thought I would use cut pieces of printed or screen printed felt (still using stuff up) and machine stitch them together to form a necklace. I originally thought that I would use many pieces and essentially just stitch them together into a big circle.

So I started cutting out some pieces from my chosen felt. The green is green on both sides but the red is only printed on one side. These are both from old wool blankets that have been dyed, printed or screen printed.

I started laying out some of the pieces and decided to create a focal point and have the rest of the necklace be a chain or some other form of attachment.

Now I had to decide how I would keep the pieces all aligned while stitching. I decided to pin the pieces to heavy paper, stitch them and then pull the paper off. As you can see the backs of the red felt is pretty ugly so I decided I would use two layers of red with grey sides facing in.

Next up was choosing the thread I wanted to use and machine stitching them all together. I used a Sulky #12 thread as it is more heavy weight and should be more sturdy. The first round of stitching went well with no major issues.

So I left really long tails to use as the rest of the necklace or for attachment to a regular chain. Then I tore the paper off the felt. I had to use tweezers to remove some of the tiny bits of paper that were stuck but so far, the process was working. The photo on the right shows the necklace stitched but the backs of the red pieces were still grey. If they got flipped over while wearing, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. So I thought I would just machine stitch another piece of red felt to the backs.

Bad idea. The two pieces together were way too thick. I had difficulty maneuvering them while stitching and the thread kept breaking. If I was to make another one, I would hand stitch the backs on. That would have looked better and been much easier.

So here’s how it looks if it was worn. I don’t wear jewelry much, meaning hardly ever, so this probably isn’t something that I will wear. But it was fun working out how to make it and I do like the look of it. Thanks for the challenge, Lyn and Annie.

Have you made any fiber based jewelry? We’d love to see your contributions to the challenge this quarter. Just post them over on the forum.