Frayed Silk Scrap and Straw Necklace

Last week I found a pretty little straw trivet at a thrift shop. It was starting to fall apart a bit, so I helped it along and used some of the pieces to make this necklace. The fabric is silk from a cut-up celery colored silk curtain lining and tangerine silk scraps.

To make the fabric flowers I just free-cut circles (I stacked the scraps and cut several at a time), hand stitched through the center to hold them together, added a wooden bead center and (on some of them) used a few gathering stitches to bunch up some of the layers. The "ribbon" tie is more of the silk sewn as a tube with tapered ends, then cut in half, turned and ironed. I ended up using a combination of fusible tape and stitching to put all the pieces together.