I promised last week that I’d be a writing a post detailing my process for making embroidered/beaded upcycled jewelry, and I am a woman who lives to deliver on self-imposed, arbitrary deadlines. I hope the post makes it easy to follow my steps for anyone interested in giving this sort of thing a try at home. (It’s fun! You should.) Please note that I am not an expert by any means, and this is simply the way that I do things – not the only way, or the best way necessarily.

Step 1: The Design

Last year, I started keeping an art journal – a notebook where I jot down ideas for projects and sketch things out. More recently, I started pasting in images that I might want to use for inspiration as well. I find this helps me keep track not only of on-going projects, but also ideas that I could revisit in the future. Anyway, the first step is jotting down a simple design, like this necklace:

Step Two – Preparing the Backing

For my jewelry projects, I like to use felt. This is for a number of reasons. Felt is more stiff than fabric – it holds its shape and gives the finished pieces some weight (but not too much). It retains its edges without requiring any finishing, for the most part anyway; you do have to be careful when working along the edges as sometime they can fray. Lastly, it’s easier to embroider on felt without a hoop than it is on regular fabric. For most jewelry pieces I make, using a hoop is out of the question due to size.

I used to use a rather heavy-duty felt in the past, mostly out of habit. When I first started beading, more than a decade ago, I used some scraps that I had at hand, which happened to be leftovers from a furniture-upholstering project of my husband’s. I’ve been working through that stash ever since. And it does work … but it’s hard work pushing the needle through and there can be quite a bit of warping, especially on smaller pieces.

So I decided to experiment with different kinds of felt. I’ve got a couple of different packages of felt in the past, which I used to use for lining (more on that later). This is just regular crafting felt, although the consistency/feel seems different from piece to piece. Some pieces are softer, fuzzier, and more pliable. Others are less fuzzy, and more cardboard-like (for lack of better description). I used the latter type for the backing for this piece.

Step 3 – Embroidery

This step is self-explanatory but a few words on working around edges. This is one of the trickiest parts of the process, and I’ve adapted my practices through trial and error.

Getting too close to the edge can easily result in fraying, so I leave a small border.

I use beading later on to cover this and “finish” the edge as it were. The needle I use for beading is much thinner, as is the thread, so it’s less likely to cause damage to the edge of the felt.

Sometimes, I like to “block” in the colour of the entire pattern (see below) then go back in and complete it.

Step 4 – Beading

Beading used to take me a long time. Depending on the size of the bead, I can sew anywhere from 1 to about 5 beads at a time. Threading the needle was the worst part; because tiny seeds beads are, well, tiny the eye of the needle has to be tiny as well which makes it a pain to thread. Now, the process is a bit faster since I’ve finally acquired a collapsible needle. Basically, a collapsible needle is a super long, super thin needle whose shank (?) splits to create the “eye”. The needle is double-pointed so you can use either end to sew. The needle is very flexible so it can be bent and manouvered quite easily.

Here is the project, part way through beading:

And here is the finished deal:

Well, almost.

Step 5 – Lining

I am not the cleanest worker, so the back of my pieces are not usually the nicest.

For that reason, and also for the comfort of the person wearing the final product, I add a lining. Back in the day, I used to use fabric for this, but it proved way too cumbersome for me. I am garbage at finishing fabric. Felt, on the other hand, is easy – for the reasons mentioned above. I like to use a piece of felt in a contrast colour, for added punch.

Again, let me reiterate that I suck at “finishing” work. Not to mention that attaching the lining without disturbing the piece itself is tricky at the best of times. So my pieces definitely have a rustic, handmade vibe to them.

Step 6 – Adding Hardware

For hardware, I like to recycle bits from old costumer jewelry I own or thrift for the purpose. This is the upcycled part and it brings me great satisfaction to think of new ways to repurpose old chains and other bits and bobs. I have only very basic tools (a wire cutter, basically) so I have to get creative as much as I can.

Here, I started with this thrifted chain:

I eyeballed the “drop” that I wanted my necklace to have, and measured two equal lengths. Then, snip, snip.

The remaining chain got set aside for another future project, and I attached the two pieces to my necklace in the most basic way imaginable:

But from the front, it looks very nice, if I do say so myself.

And here it is, from concept to reality:

This is the kind of project anyone can probably do with a bit of patience, so if you’re inclined to give it a try and have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

This is not going to be a post you are used to seeing on this blog. It’s not a post I am used to writing. However, it’s one I feel compelled by recent events to write, having come to the realization, last week, that silence – no matter its reasons – is not an option. It’s cowardice, or complacency, or acquiescence, or implicit support; all things I cannot live with. So. I am writing this post knowing that I will probably not be able to say the right things, in the right way. Words matter, and I have always tried to be careful about how I use them; better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing. At least, that used to be my approach. Today, I have to put that aside and say what needs to be said.

Black lives matter.

What happened in Minneapolis last week – and in other parts of the US stretching back too long – is not acceptable. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police office, sworn to protect, is an unspeakable crime that cries for justice. If we have reached the point when people feel that violent protest is the only avenue of communication left, something is deeply, fundamentally broken in our society. One of the best explanations I’ve seen to date is an IGTV segment that Trevor Noah shared last week. I encourage you all to watch it. [If I can figure out how to link it, I will add it here.] In it, he talks about the social contract and the consequences of having it violated, again and again, against black people. This perspective puts a different lens on the protests that are now happening in the US (and other parts of the world) and the (justifiable) rage and betrayal that black people are feeling.

Is it difficult, as a white person, to observe that outpouring on social media and elsewhere? Yes. It’s human nature to want to defend, justify, absolve oneself of guilt and shame. But, you know, it’s probably infinitely less difficult than watching society trample upon its promises to you, as a citizen – as regards the protection of your basic human rights – while feeling powerless to do anything about it. So my self-work over the past week has been to push aside my own feelings and tackle the difficult. Listen to black and other minority voices. Reflect on their words, without giving in to the impulse to self-justify or talk over. Amplify their voices to the extent that I can. Learn what I can do better. Learn what I can do to actively help, as opposed to passively support.

Some of my action items (for fellow white folks who are interested): seek out BIPOC artists and content creators, listen to their stories, support (financially and otherwise) their work. Share black voices on my social media. Talk to my children and my family about what it means to be anti-racist. Donate to organizations that work with and support BIPOC (and LGBTQ) in their communities.

And in doing my (small) part, there is one guiding principle that I try to keep in mind at all times. It’s a lesson I have been slowly learning over the last ten years; a hard lesson that needs to be constantly re-learned and practiced.

Stay humble.

I say it’s hard because I am a naturally proud person. And, worse, intellectually proud. Being proud is not the same thing as being arrogant, and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, necessarily. But it can have problematic effects. It can create blindspots. It can create intransigence. It makes it really hard to admit you’re wrong. That you don’t know everything. That you don’t have all the answers. That there are valid perspectives different than your own. Conversely, humility means accepting the possibility of all those things. It does not mean putting others’ opinions above your own. It means being willing to listen, consider, adjust, learn, grow.

Listening is the first step and is itself much harder than it sounds. If you will allow me to generalize for a moment, people are not good at listening. We are good at hearing what others are saying with one ear while simultaneously formulating a mental response, defence, or justification that will allow us to avoid changing our pre-existing opinions. Opposing views, in particular, are seen as a direct threat to our personal value system; I see this on social media all the time: merely stating a preference (no matter how innocuous the topic) can generate a flood of comments from people who somehow feel their own personal choices are under attack. The current political climate has exacerbated this tendency. Some days, it feels like everyone is shouting into the void, and no one is listening even as we are all going deaf.

So yeah, staying humble. It’s constant work because the world will constantly challenge your capacity for humility. If it’s not, you’re doing something wrong. Living in an echo chamber, a bubble. But living that way out of fear is no way to live either. Being wrong is human; in some ways, it’s the flip side of our amazing capacity to learn, grow, adapt. I have spent my whole life being afraid of being wrong, and only recently started to do the work to embrace that fear and move past it. Pride, the fear of being wrong, all of that is ego, and Buddhism tells us that ego is an illusion. I may be a failing Buddhist, but that is one lesson I try to remember every day.

From that lens, we can see that white fragility is the shackles of ego but unlike most self-illusions, it’s one that can have very real, and very terrible consequences for others. If you want to see a stark example of white fragility in action, watch the video taken by Christian Cooper of his encounter with Amy Cooper (no relation) in Central Park. A person asking you to leash your dog in an on-leash area is not a personal attack. Yet, in making that entirely justified request, Christian Cooper was lucky to avoid negative consequences. Lucky not because he deserved anything different; lucky because many other black people’s experiences have had a different outcome.

I will end here because it’s not my words you need to hear at this time. Instead, I encourage you to seek out and listen to black and other minority voices – in your community, on social media, in the mass media you consume – and give their perspective the proper consideration they deserve.