$1936

Hi, people! This is my first time on the forum :) Greetings!!

This is not a 'help me' thread, but more for myself to have some record of what I'm doing. Maybe someone wants to do a similar project and this can be of help, or wants to share their opinion or tips, or what you think. Anyway, I have no idea what will I end up with, but I hope you enjoy my little project.

So, I'm making an ankle bracelet for my boyfriend, and he only asked for it to be 'wide', and to have on it his favourite color, prussian blue. But, by chance, I discovered he loves Xochicalco's Quetzalcoatl design and painted it in several places, so of course I want to use that for the bracelet :)
This is it:



As you can see, I like to make things hard for myself haha Anyway, I think it's a beautiful design and very fitting for a bracelet, so I began working on it.

For the moment, I made a couple drawings, I will try to upload them in another post since I'm no expert at forums and still don't know how to.

Ah yeah, I have till Easter to do this, it will be fun I suppose haha

I figured out how to upload them I think. This is my very first try to make it into a bracelet design:



As I was doing it, I realised that would be an alpha design. So I tried a diagonal one but then kind of abandoned it. I very much prefer diagonal patterns, but I think that designing one with Quetzacoatl on it would be way to complicated for me. This is what I had when I left it:



So I decided for alpha. I opened Photoshop and did this (colors are secondary for the moment):



I'm very happy with the result, but then I realised it's over 50 strings wide... oops...
So I simplified it:



This time is 37 dots wide, so I think it's 37 strings plus the one making the background, no? And a little border each side, too

And that's all I have for the moment. Maybe I will try to simplify it even more, I want it wide but maybe not that much. I also would like to add a third color, but I need to watch some tutorials first.

I don't see how to edit my previous post, so sorry for three posts in a row, but I was just playing with the colors, and came up with this:



I don't know if I can make it, but I like it very much, specially the fact that the head looks like a skull.

I?d love to see this finished, it?s very nice. It?s also not an easy one to make ;-) But it?s definitely a nice challenge!

Thank you kleinevos! It's nice to see someone else is also interested in the result :)

So I found this fantastic tutorial on multicoloured alphas:

https://www.friendship-bracelets.net/tutorial.php?id=152

This is exactly was I needed. It's even easier to add more colours than I thought.
After working on the design a little, I have this now:



I just want to be sure about the design and the wideness of the bracelet before I start knotting... I want to see already finished bracelets with a similar number of strings, and then decide if I want to simplify my design again.

This is about 40 knots wide, right? I have written down in my notes that 10 knots wide is about 2 to 2.5 cm wide. So 40 will be 8 to 10 cm wide. I use strings that are a tiny bit thicker than floss, btw. It also depends a lot on the pattern and on the tightness of the knotting how wide it will be exactly.
Have you ever made an alpha before? If yes, you can measure that. If not, it will be very very hard to start with something like this. I?d suggest to at least make a practice piece first.

Wow, thanks for that info, kleinevos! :)

I've done some alphas before, but it's true it's never been this wide. I'll measure those, but if it's around 8-10 cm, it's even bigger than I thought, and that's too much. I have an idea on how to cut down the number of strings (currently 41) without ruining it too much, and I suppose I could try knotting tight.

I was also thinking on making a practice piece, as you said :)

Btw, do you know if that 10k-2.5cm measure also works for the longitude?

That also depends on the way you knot, and probably also a bit on the pattern, but it will be about the same.
I also measured an alpha I made with DMC Petra 5, which is about the same size as floss, and that was about 1.75 cm per 10 knots and about the same per 10 rows.

Note that alphas tend to get wider when you have to make more color changes in a row. So your pattern will be wider than usual, especially on the side where the head is.