A Fish Necklace

 

I made two stoneware fish for a necklace and glazed each with a different glaze.  The feel so smooth and nice!  Before I fired them, I carved a curved channel in the flat back, going from mouth to tail, so that I could string them later.  I would have been ideal to have a hole running through them, but I couldn't figure out how to do that (but I have an idea for next time...).

 

The bead embroidery centerpiece features a gorgeous piece of green milk sea glass and a fossilized sand dollar, as well as a small moonstone cabochon and a few freshwater pearls.  I've used different colors and sizes of seed beads.  I find bead embroidery so relaxing - I should do more!

 

The colors in this photo of the finished piece are off - the ones in the top photo are more true.

 

Anyway, constructing the necklace was tricky.  When I made the fish I also made the small shell for a button style closure.  The cord is hemp.  The way it works is that a single hemp cord begins at the center of the necklace, loops through the hole in the base of the shell closure (the button) and back to the center.  Then for the other half of the necklace the cord continues, forms a loop (the button-hole), then back to the middle.

 

At the buttonhole end, I macramed another piece of hemp around the loop of the original cord using half hitch knots, then used the two ends to knot around original cords back to where the fish should be.  I glued the cords (no knots) into the channel in the fish then trimmed the ends of the new cord at the halfway point where the pendant is.  For the other side, I knotted a piece of hemp around the original cord at the base of the shell then knotted it down to the other fish, glued the cords(no knots)  in the trough, then trimmed the ends of the new cord like on the other side.

 

I glued pieces of ultrasuede on the backs of the fish to help hold the cords in place but also for a finished look.

 

The final step was to closely bind all the cords where the pendant would hang with sewing thread.  Then I constructed a peyote strip at the top of the pendant and closed it over the cord.  Voila!

 

The construction was a challenge to figure out.