"Complete" continued.....

Now for the part of the piece that seemed to take a long time.....

These are the corners of the diamond. I stitched a looping design and added beads to the tips of the stitches for added richness. I formed smaller stars from gold and silver beads. If you look closely you can see some tiny crystal stars that I glued on. These pictures also show the added braids. I love the braids that I found on Etsy. They come from long closed warehouses and date from 1900-1930s. To tie the braid more closely with the beaded design I stitched silver/black seed beads on top of it. I always was looking for ways to add richness to the design.

These are close-ups of the dark corners. The background fabrics are gray and black silk and black velvet. I added black feather stitching to the fabric to add to the texture of the background. It was done with black metallic floss I found at Walmart (I couldn't believe it). I found some black antique soutache braid that I sewed and spiced together to form the curled corner designs. That was a learning experience....more difficult than I imagined. I outlined the design in silver/black seed beads to make it stand out. The circles you see are black sequins outlined with the beads, and then there are smaller circles made only from the seed beads. The absolute most trying part and the part that slowed my progress was making the corners mirror images of each other! They didn't come out exact, but close enough that your eyes are still relaxed when you look at it...nothing jumps out as "off"...thank heavens! Along the outer edge I couched down some antique gold cording. I was very pleased with how that came out; a simple but elegant ending to the design. The outer border is black crushed velvet.