Entry for 2nd International Miyuki Delica Challenge
Necklaces Pins Ornaments Art Objects 2nd Delica Challenge Charity Work

2nd Annual Delica Challenge (April 1999)

"The Phoenix"

This year's Delica Challenge theme was "Ancient Myths and Legends". For my piece, I chose to work with the legend of the Phoneix. This legend is present in several cultures. It can be found in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Oriental mythology, and has been adopted by many others.

The legend of the Phoenix tells of a bird, the only one of its kind. When it feels the end of its long life approaching (500 years or more!), it builds itself a nest in the topmost branches of a tree. The rising sun sets fire to the nest, and the bird is consumed in the flames. From the ashes, the new Phoenix rises, and inters the ashes of its predecessor in an egg of Myrhh. It then flies to the altar of the sun god and leaves the egg there before beginning its new life.


This piece shows the Phoenix right before it takes off to begin its long flight to the altar of the sun god. It spreads it wings to bask in the sun for a moment, just as a curious little butterfly comes along and lands on the egg. (The butterfly was the only symbol of "death and rebirth" that was not present in the legend, but I liked the idea, so included him anyway.)

The following pictures highlight some of the stages of the piece as I worked on it. To give you an idea of the scope of the piece, I spent more than 425 hours working on it, using over 600 yards of thread. The piece is about 3 feet tall and about the same in width. The wingspan of the bird is 17 inches from wingtip to wingtip. In the end, I did not receive an award for this piece, although it did travel to Portland, Oregon for Embellishments 1999.

From Start to Finish
Don managed to catch this shot of me while working. I'm just starting to cover the tree, but I've already put in over 100 hours of work just making leaves! I also quickly found out that it's really hard to bead when "branches" keep snagging your hair and your thread! (BTW, he did get some other shots while I was working, but this is the only one where I don't look like death warmed over, so I decided not to share those. <wry grin> Taking pictures when I've just been up all night beading doesn't lead to some happy pictures ;->)
Here's the tree about a third done. At this point I had realized that the tree was going take a lot longer than I had originally planned for. The deadline is getting closer, and I'm starting to panic a bit! Don was a rock for me, making sure I ate, doing laundry, and generally taking care of things so I could work.
Well, a very long 4-day weekend later, and I'm a lot closer, but I still have a long way to go. Mr. bird has skin now, but still needs feathers! (You can see from the background that I have finished the tree, though.)
Here it is, all done and ready to go. I had to stay up for 27 hours straight, beading like crazy to get it finished, then shipped it overnight delivery, but I got it to Maine just in time! I think it turned out pretty good, but I am a bit biased!
A view of the back. I used a variation of a fringe technique to make the back feathers. It took forever to do! The tail is made using linked chain stitch, as are the wings. If I had more time, I would have made more wing feathers, but as it is, I barely had enough. One of these days, I may go back and add more feathers, but I have a feeling it's going to be a long time before I'm in any mood to work on this again!
Here's a closeup of the butterfly and egg. I was pretty proud of how they turned out. The butterfly is flat peyote, and each wing is made separately and then attached to the body. The egg is tubular peyote, starting with 1-drop, and increasing to 2-drop, then 3-drop, the decreasing back down.
Suggestions and additions to: banshee@BeadingBanshee.com