Sequinella Mermaid

 This piece felt more like a craft project than bobbin lace because of all the sequins!  

Sitting in my pattern 'to do' pile for nearly 4 years, Sequinella the mermaid finally made it to a pillow of her own when I lost the use of my printer and had no freshly printed patterns to make. 

I started at one end of her hair I worked to the head and back down the other side.  White thread in a simple cloth stitch had short lengths of metallic thick thread running through in gold, blue, green, silver and pink. On the outside of the curves, I added a line of silver seed beads to act as water droplets catching the light. 

The bodice is a simple half stitch in a selection of different colour threads. I did think of using variegated thread, but over larger areas, I find simply winding bobbins with different colours gives a more even blend.  Pale turquoise, pale green, aqua, kingfisher and spring green in Egyptian cotton machine sewing threads.  

The tally petals detail at the waist took care of the excess threads before the honeycomb ground was started.  

A bit fiddley at first, due to making the honeycomb with sequins inside the curls of the hair, I added the sequins on the diagonal row which only uses half the pins.  For the very narrow bit of the tail, I resorted to seed beads in the same colours till the fin was reached.  

The fin comprised several cloth stitch trails with sequins running close together in rows.  I varied the size of sequins in the fin but kept to the same colourway.  

A simple gold micro bead necklace was added as a finish and, after all this time, Sequinella the Mermaid is finally ready to meet all the sea creatures I have made.