New Lace piece

I've started another piece using lace. This time the centre is really large piece of agate which I bought as a rather ordinary brooch from my local collectors market. It has fascinating pattern of swirls in shades of golden brown with faint greenish streaks. The lace is a wide coffee coloured piece with thick embroidered flowers and loops.

I've photographed it among the chaos of my beading mat, showing some of the beads I'm using. There's quite a wide slelction and all sizes from quite large old white beads to tiny ones, some of which I can't get on the needle properly, I have to be very selective with those. I'm influenced by a book I found in our library stack it's a book about Roman ruins in Libya, have a look at this mosaic (the third one down called 'fishing'), it is astounding in it's delicacy and realism. The colours of the stone are the colours of this agate with soft blue greys and dull reds. The plan is to embroider beads onto the net between the embroidery, trying to give the feel of the old mosaics and worn plaster of the roman buildings, As the lace is very wide I plan to create pleats in the top edges to creat a curve. I'm hoping this will echo the carved pillars. I think it will be quite special when it's done, I hope so anyway. I've discovered copper clay recently, I understand you can fire it with a torch so I might make some embellishments with that if I can afford to buy some.