If last year I beaded and patterned a real lot for our SIZB Group challenge (Bead a Song - English Country Garden) but didn't write as much as I would have wanted, this year I did a lot of coordinating and drawing, less patterning, but there is a loooot that I can tell about it, which is what this blog is all about! Beading trials and tribulations.
This is what our group made for this year's challenge: a float with a tractor, with people dressed in traditional New Orleans Mardi Gras colors, with Venetian bridge-inspired railings and lamp posts, including the amazing pattern of the cobblestone pathway of Ipanema Beach in Rio the Janeiro.
In this post you will discover how, as a Zoom group, we created our Venecia en Río de Orleáns float.
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| Our Venecia en Río de Orleáns float |
Inspiration & study
When the theme "Mardi Gras" was announced we all agreed to make a float, but what we'd put on the float was unclear. Sylvia asked us for ideas and possibly patterns without particular guidance, to see what we would come up with. My muse went in overdrive mode once the theme and float idea sunk in. I knew that I would not be able to bead a lot myself, because of numerous commitments (and a Carnival mask in the make for my own BWG challenge entry), but... I was completely besotted with what the muse threw at me and couldn't stop drawing. I first investigated quite a bit about the regulations, notably maximum size in length, height and width, safety requirements one has to respect, such as railings for the people on the float, and fire extinguishers, etc. We really wanted it to correspond to a real-life float.
I made plans for a double float with a tractor and a bridge inspired by the Rialto bridge in Venice. Yes a double float - more about that later. Everything is at a 1/24 scale, except the bridge of course, which is a Carnival decor that offers the perfect railing.I made an inspiration board, and the photos below were part of it:
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| The Rialto Bridge in Venice |
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| Street lamps at Piazza San Marco |
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| Mooring plots in Venice |
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| Mardi Gras costumes |
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| Color of the water in sun light or shade photo by Helen McIntyer who went to Venice and found inspiration for the water. |
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| A tractor with just the right green and yellow but we preferred purple for our tractor. |
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| Ipanema cobblestones |
Designing (and beading)
This is more or less what the project looked like when I finished the sketches (and curtain patterns made).
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| View from the left and the inside. Of course many more details and more paper work was done. |
Fortunately for my crazy muse, our group is blessed to count amazing beaders and designers who all were willing to do this project together and who did an awesome job. We met through Zoom every 2 weeks to talk about our progress and various details and needs, and it was great fun!
Béné Damnet, together with her husband Jean-Luc, created an absolutely fantastic truck with a big hook that the builders would be able to trim to size when connecting the floats. They made a base that Béné would cover with beads with as many techniques as she could think of (Brickstitch, Peyote stitch, "Huichol" bead mosaic, Herringbone stitch... and Jean-Luc added special features: real lights, even a flash light on the roof! The battery is hidden inside the truck and can be accessed behind the number plate added by Sylvia, who also beaded to cover the truck. Isn't it stunning?!
For the stairs of the bridge, just plain stairs could have been made, but Jess Hayman's muse fell for the cobble stone patterns that can be found in Rio de Janeiro, specifically the ones near Ipanema beach. I cannot express how stunned I was when she showed her first CRAW step with the successful motif AND the perfect size...I am still stunned how this motif repeats itself so beautifully. It's just incredible.
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| from step |
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| to stairs |
Jess also designed and beaded the remarkable two-drop Peyote stitch stone work under the bridge. I designed the CRAW arches. Our beaders, Shawn Brown, Gillian Watson, Vee Pretorius, Angela Bramwell, Jess and Sylvia all did a sterling job.
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| to bridge |
Liz Thornton designed and beaded the wheels for the trailers (sorry no photo, but they are rather small and discreet).
Jenny Wilson designed and beaded the lamp posts which I absolute love. Jenny was part of the building team who created the hardware (float) and put everything together.
I designed and beaded the caps for the tall mooring poles in the water near the bridge with diagonal Cellini Peyote, and Ann Musty made the white and red poles in tubular Peyote.
Meanwhile, Marion Dearlove and Nancy Jenner each designed and wrote two patterns for male and female figures for our beaders to make and dress up as desired. Here, our beaders could shine with their own ideas. Stringing, Brick stitch, Peyote stitch, Netting, Fringing, Picot stitch, RAW, Herringbone, and Saint Petersburg stich, and probably also a bit of Square stitch!
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| Marion made a tribe of many colors dressed in the traditional green, purple and gold colors seen in New Orleans |
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| Girls and Boys by Nancy Jenner |
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| Diane Young's boys |
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| Ann Rust's Dancers |
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| Vee made two jesters showing her amazing geometric skills |
I don't have photos of all the little persons, but in the photo of the materials that you will find near the end of this article you can probably spot other dolls made by Christine Jones or another building team member. Below is my girl, based on Nancy Jenner's model, and Marion's
pattern for her little hands.
I beaded a second tiny mask for a potential partner... which I could not bead myself because of tendonitis in my shoulder. I was inspired by a gown that I saw on Amazon for Carnival.
In the images here you can see some of the Brick stitch diamonds that I designed to decorate the bridge arches, to show that with 4 colors, the possibilities are endless.
Some were beaded by Kay Brown, Sharron Smith and Christine Jones, but Marion Dearlove also designed her own diamonds.
Now the curtains. Why curtains? Well, curtains hanging from bridges seems to be quite a thing in Venice. They're the equivalent of large advertisement panels on the side of our roads. Because the bridge was to be cut in two pieces - one piece per "half" trailer", these two curtains would finish them beautifully. The pattern is based on a Brick stitch pattern by Béné, which I transposed to Herringbone stitch. They are there like an affirmation of the colorway we chose.
These two curtains were exquisitely beaded by Denise Bending and Teresa Sagaser.
And so our mighty building team, composed of Jenny Wilson, Jenny Argyle, Helen McIntyre, Jess and Sylvia, inherited a considerable pile of beaded items to put together in a very small space.
Putting it all together
It's been an herculean task for our building team. A lot of work and very little sleep is what they had during the week-end they could meet to work on it.
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| Tough job: in this image you can see all the elements beaded by the participants |
Helen had already worked on a beautiful 3-drop stitch design to mimic the ripples on water in the canal, and pushed the details farther by making the water in the shade of the bridge darker than that in the sunlight. I think that it is truly magnificent. She also made the pavement of the streets near the bridge, after trying various combinations of Tila beads. It is beautiful too, and I think that it was made with Square stitch.
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| Helen's water sample |
Now if the pavement had to be seriously reduced, she had to bead a lot more to cover the portion in between the two half bridges that had to be together on one trailer.
So what happened for the float to become a single one instead of a double...
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| It looks as if it would still work on 45x60 but alas... I was soooo disappointed |
These are the pitfalls of working apart together and last-minute solutions to be found.
Unsurprisingly, we didn't win our category this year... The judges were immensely impressed by it and had a hard time choosing. They wrote a truly lovely appreciation, with plenty of compliments, but one thing I don't understand is that they said that "it was hard to find areas for improvement[...] it
would have been amazing if the tractor could have been able to move the
float! Incorporating even more stitches would have elevated the piece even further". Well... I have manners and won't say what I really think about that last remark...
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| Yummy snacks - I could use some... |
For me, a bridge cut in half for no obvious reason simply doesn't make sense and, despite the yummy fuel available, the team could not bead another xx hours to make a central piece... Helen already had to complete the portion of water that was missing, and the street lamps had to be finished too. And the other projects entered in the challenge were all of amazing quality.
But you know what?
The members voted for us as best Group project, which is wonderful, for there were 7 very good group submissions, and they are beaders with skilled eyes. Yay!
Another nice thing is that I can show all the photos that I want to, without cutting the grass under the Guild's feet who like to have a bit of exclusivity when publishing interviews of the winners with photos of the works in the July journal, so it might sound odd, but it is nearly nice to not win: we can brag about our beadwork!
My thanks to all of our designers and beaders who beaded their fingers off and to the husbands of the ladies who helped with hardware... Geoff Wilson and Jean-Luc Damnet.
Thank you for reading this far! Please leave a comment to tell what you prefer on our float!
