Began playing with doing some of this last night. Made it up with leftover bits and pieces randomly in my collection, but it was surprisingly quick and 'easy'.
Did a simple straight piece, about 8cm long. I used some white wool for the base, glass pearls couched on top and some random braid for edging. Took about 1.5 hrs, with figuring out how to do anything because I have never couched before! lol
Couple of things I learned.
Firstly use a little less of the wool padding or at least have the braid your using before you start a project and get enough padding to suit. Whilst the 'lumpy crap' I was using actually turned out fine, it sat a little too high with the braid.
Secondly. I will need some practice with hiding the ends of the braid. That was a bit fail.
Thirdly. A certain amount of tension is needed with keeping the pearls in place whilst couching them down. You need three hands to do this effectively. Or you need a bulldog clip :)
I used yellow (hideous hideous yellow) thread so that I could see all my work and learn from what I did. That worked pretty well. I was surprised at how many stitches you see underneath the piece.
What I did was quite a simple piece. Whilst doing it I had thoughts of how to manage longer lengths of wadding for the pattern, using a cotton crochet thread instead of the wool (as I see others do on occasions), how to fit larger patterns onto a single frame (you DEF need a frame), where to get more appropriate braid from (and checked out some examples where they used more seed beads couched to the sides).
All in all I enjoyed this. I surprised myself with an ability to couch quite effectively (to my complete novice eyes at least). And it looks very pretty too :)
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