Keeping it Simple

Here's that black t-shirt, plus beads:As you can see, I kept it pretty simple. Here are the things I thought about:

• I didn't want to measure and mark the placement of beads;
• The neckline was already as low as I'm comfortable with;
• I wasn't sure how the fabric would cope with the extra weight of the beads;
• When I had a good look at the pleats already sewn into the neckline, I found they weren't quite evenly spaced, so I didn't want to emphasise them.

I decided to just attach a single row of the blue seed beads to the seamline between the neck edge and the body of the t-shirt. I used a back stitch in black polyester thread and stitched through each bead twice. I'm hoping that will be enough to secure the beads. I plan to wash it by machine--gentle cycle in a lingerie bag.

You can come to your own conclusion about the beads in the centre. That pleat of fabric is attached around the neckline, so there were 6 thicknesses of fabric there. That gave me scope to add a few more beads, but I was still not feeling like doing any planning. I started off aiming for a heart shape,but it ended up a bit random. I think I can live with that.

I wore the t-shirt yesterday--we had a warm day. It passed my main test: I didn't have to think about it after I put it on--no fiddling or adjusting. I've still got enough beads left to make a matching pair of earings. The whole project took about half an hour after I'd found my materials. That's simple enough for me.