beaded watch fob

The January "artifact of the month" in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (De Smet, South Dakota) e-club newsletter is a beaded watch fob made by Mary Ingalls. You can see that watch fob HERE.

Although I know that Mary made a beaded watch case for Rev. Brown in the summer of 1883, this is the first I'd heard of a watch fob. I can't imagine that I'm the only person who saw the watch fob photo and immediately wondered she stashed the seed beads, and if there are enough blue, yellow, and silver ones to make this tonight, or am I going to have to go to the craft store in the morning?

Anyway, it took about 15 minutes to chart the pattern above, so happy-beading-to-me. The piece is 17 beads wide; each heart motif is based on 12 rows. The main rectangle is 40 rows, so 744 beads (69 gold? I'm not counting them again...), not counting the fringe. My best guess for the fringe on the original (not shown in the chart above) is 6 blue, 4 silver, 10 blue, 4 silver, then blue and silver in proportion to finish the loop in back. If you don't know how to do beading, you can check out this site.

Labels: laura ingalls wilder

- posted by pioneergirl at 12:45 AM