INTERNATIONAL BEADING WEEK 25TH JULY – 2ND AUGUST
Well international beading week might be over but this year you have until the 1st of October to get submissions in the post, so there is still time to get cracking.
Ok what it is all about for those who like me didn’t know. International beading week as mentioned is held every year from the 25th of July to the 2nd of august and is sponsored by The Beadworkers Guild at the international beading week website; you can find a link below to the website. IBW as it is known holds Events, competitions and has freebies to stoke fellowship between beadweavers all over the world.
This year their Event for international beading week is called the Black & White Together Project Lead by Prof. Sam Norgard of America. It is a project that hopes to connect makers of various ethnicities with a large community project. You can find pre-recored video sessions with demos of how to make the eight free patterns and art lectures. There is also a graph of the eight patterns and links to PDFs of each pattern.
Now you can also make your own patterns to add to the project as long they incorporate black and white and are the same size as the other patterns. I took advantage of this and sent off 30 warped squares, and only really stopped making squares for the project because I was keen to start again on my Fibonacci project. You should know if you haven’t found out already that making warped squares and then stars is addicting.
You can also join the BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER PROJECT facebook group to see updates and get inspired by other participants work, so far over 335 warped squares have been submitted and arrived, and hopefully mine will soon be among them despite the us postal issues at the moment. There have been some wonderful photos by people and their stunning patterns, it really is amazing just what you can do with 12 rows of beadwork.
Personal I love the project and think we need more awarenesses about the international community projects that pop up from time to time, I’ve been aware of a few others but this is the first one that I have really had a chance to participate in. It is really cool to be able to be a part of an international project and I hope there will be more to come from IBW in the future.
All the best Lou, currently no cats present.
delicatebylou 