Fabric Covered Bead Necklace

This necklace came about, believe it or not, after a clear out of my son's bedroom! It's inspiration lay in a lovely soft cotton shirt that I could not bear to part with but no longer fitted him.....a couple of broken necklaces which I had been moving from pillar to post were put to good use too.

After looking at the size of the beads we wanted to wrap in the fabric, we 'guesstimated' the width of fabric required and set about cutting the shirt into evenly sized strips. We machined the strips across their width, then folded and stitched them down their length to form a 'tube', turned it inside out and neatened and knotted one end. Do not underestimate how much fabric this will take lengthwise! We made a tube roughly 4m long for a necklace about 1m long. We then pushed the first bead down the length of the tube, pulled the fabric tight around it and tied a knot. The second, third etc bead were treated in the same way until the desired length of necklace was achieved. After the final knot, the end of the tube was neatened off to match the beginning and then tied in a 'bow'. Sooooo pretty!