Embroidery Ideas and Techniques to Try: Jewelry Chain

This page will have ideas and techniques that I want to have a go at. I will show how the technique or idea is attempted and how it turned out.

Jewelry Chain as an Embroidery Material

I usually use just glass size 11 seed beads in my embroidery but lately I have been incorporating old broken jewelry pieces as well. I try to buy boxes that weigh at least 10 to 20 lbs from Ebay. You never know what you're going to find in them! My daughter and I dig through the boxes and take the jewelry apart to use in new pieces. I have been using these jewelry parts in my bead embroidered wall mirrors. For this mirror I decided to try using the chain as an embroidery material. Usually the chain gets tossed away but I decided to see if I could find a use for it instead.

To begin, I took apart the necklaces with my needlenose pliers. I gathered enough of the same type of chain to make a complete wrap around the mirror. I sewed it down using a simple whip stitch on the parts of the links that rested on the felt. I then added accent colored beads on top of the chain to further lock its position in and to add another dimension of color and texture.

I am happy with how it turned out and I plan on using jewelry chain as an embroidery material again. This was actually my second attempt at using it as an embroidery material. I previously used jewelry chain as an embroidery material on a floral bag charm that also turned out well. Since it was a smaller piece, I decided to try the technique again on a larger item.