Another idea from "The Art and Elegance of Beadweaving" was making a normal Ndebele (Herringbone) strap, using pairs of different sized seed beads, from large to small. In her example, Ms. Wells used 6/0 seeds and two pairs of
8/0 beads, with a couple of 11/0's thrown in at the end as accents. The different bead sizes cause the strap to gently curve, making a beautiful collar type necklace.DD has been after me since the beginning of time to make her an Egyptian collar. I had made one for my niece out of rows of ladder stitched bugles, but decided that was so painful and tedious, I'd never do it again. I made a sample the other night out of different sizes of beads in morbid colors, just to see if this might work.
It does. I now have about eight different sizes of S/L amber seed beads on order from Shipwreck (the Czech ones work better than the Japanese seeds in this case), and DD is finding all sorts of Egyptian motifs for me to embroider and applique to the collar. In checking some museum sites, I found that rectangular semi precious beads were widely used in embellishment, and amazingly enough, I have a boatload of them from South Pacific.
This is probably going to take me quite a while, but it's going to be gorgeous.
Kathy N-V