One of my beading goals is to make a large 3d castle. But I am still experimenting with the best way to make it happen. One of the my experiments is a 3d tower in CRAW (Cubic Right Angle Weave) stitch I modified for my Fibonacci project so that it would work given it needs to be mathematically accurate.
I started this tower in Jan 2021 and worked on it a bit on and off till July 2021. It is the slowest most time-intensive beadwork stitch I have yet to come across. Trust me to make things harder for myself.
Anyway, I stated back up again in late Oct of this year and managed to get up off the base and first row of the tower.
I won’t end up using this stitch to make the castle, but I do want to finish this tower as it is a cool project in its own right, even if it will take forever.
It is in some ways very different from my
usual style, given that it is rather solid and while still based on a geometric shape it is not a polyhedron. Though it still has the minimalism of my usual style and it is made with one colour.
The rainbow grey looks great as a choice for a tower IRL but is not the best in photos and can make it a bit hard to see details in the photos though the shadows do help.
The tower is also one of the few projects where I drew up a basic design before I started, to help me keep a track of the 3d design as I worked given it is not the same on all sides.
Not that it has stopped me from changing the design as I go along. You can see in the photo how the windows use to be smaller, and were changed to be bigger, because as my cousin pointed out it was a lot of work to make the stairs if you couldn’t really see once the tower was finished.
I ended up settling on the windows being combined so that they are five rows wide, after all, it’s not a functioning tower so it doesn’t need to be defensible with small windows. I also changed the walls, unfortunately after I started going up, so it is a bit painful
adding in the outer layer now, but I felt that one row was just too thin. and also what really decided it was that I broke two beads and had to add new ones in but they ended up bulging out. I’ve learnt not to make the rows too tight, and the mistakes will be hidden in the middle of the wall now.
I’ve learnt a lot making this, like if I ever do something like this again in this stitch I will leave a gap in the floor under the stairs and hide it by having the stairs be covered in. This will give me room to move on the lower stairs as I am adding them in. As it was I broke some needles and had to use my pliers to get the needle into some of the beads and through them as the angels were all wrong and I couldn’t get my hand in the space. I might also try adding in the outer layer of the stitch on the sides,
instead of on the top and bottom. It would give the walls a different look.
Still, I am happy with how it is turning out though it most likely not be done until late next year at the earliest as it takes so long to do and I have other projects that need to get done.
Hopefully, people find it as interesting as I do as it is one of my passion projects. Not that any of my beadwork is not a passion project, but I really do make the things I am interested in and want to see. How ever this is one that I have been wanting to do for a long time and have continued to work on despite the set backs I’ve had with it.
Anyway, I had better get a move on with printing off my patterns for order and writing out the word charts so I can get them made. My next post will have some news about the world record, it’s a bit complicated but will hopefully work out.
Lou.
delicatebylou 