DIY statement Necklace with double braid

The Idea

A statement necklace is my favorite accessory, but if you’re a regular reader, you already know that! Also it’s a perfect way to elevate the simplest shirt of dress! An ideal add on for Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties I dare say!

Making a statement necklace that would include embroidery floss and some kind of (faux) bling has been in my mind for a long time. Specifically since I bought a statement necklace last year. It also helped that I found a similar DIY in Honestly WTF. But you see I aimed for a much more bolder necklace featuring not one but two braids. I always had this tendency of aiming high!

The Process

I thought that it would be a piece of cake. Make 2 fat braids, sew them together and then sew one of them on the necklace. Initially I planned on keeping the necklace’s chain in case I wanted to wear it as plain necklace (without the braid) in the future. Not knowing how long to make the braid I followed the instructions from the Honestly WTF tutorial, which resulted in a really long braid, which I ended up undoing, cutting in half and braiding again.

Next came the assembly. I sew them altogether and wore them and then I realized that the braid didn’t curve. And I was devastated. So I did 2 things: first I cut off all unnecessary chain from the necklace and only kept the rhinestone part, then I curved the necklace, sew the first braid and having it all curved I sew the second one. It.Worked! Because the braid was somewhat sort for my neck, I attached to it some of the leftover chain from the necklace on one side and the lobster clasp on the other! Voila!

What do you think?

 The Tutorial

You will need:

a rhinestone necklace (mine is from Forever 21)

5 embroidery floss skeins (three grey-ish and two purple-ish, I used numbers 161 and 453 from DMC)

needle (you can use darning like the Honestly WTF tutorial or a smaller one, I used a normal one)

white sewing thread (optional)

Start by unfolding the grey skeins and fold each one 8 times (each skein should give you 16 strands). Take the 32 strands (2 skeins) and tie them together on one end using either a strand from the third grey skein or with common sewing floss (I used the latter). Braid the strands and tie them together on the other side.

Next unfold the purple skeins and again fold each one 8 times. You’ll have again total 32 strands. What I did was to take off 5 strands and replace them with 5 grey ones (you see I have my pin as inspiration). Take the strands, tie them together on one end with an extra strand or sewing floss, braid them and tie the other side.

Next I aligned the purple/grey braid with the necklace and sew them together using a couple of flosses from a purple strand having the rhinestones facing down and curve a bit (to avoid the issues I mentioned above). Then having the purple/grey braid curved I sew it together with the gray braid.

I used two leftover purple strands to tie the two braids together. On one side I attached the lobster clasp from the rhinestone necklace and on the other hand some extra chain!