What kind of chain.....................?

This is the first of the challenge stitches which was completely new to me and sent me flying to Sharon's Dictionary of Stitches. Well you don't know what you are going to get if you put Barred Chain into a search engine!!!! Well it sounded a bit sado-thingy,... you know! when I started to try it out I thought it was. I have never shed so much blood.
I have not even bothered to scan my sketch because it was just a little wobbly squiggle! I really didn't know what I was going to do with it and I thought I would look up the definition of barred to see if that helped and I came across a reference to a barred spiral galaxy on Wikipedia showing a photograph from the wonderful Hubble Telescope (if you've never visited take a look at the gallery, just breathtaking).
Anyway here is my barred spiral galaxy using barred chain which I have now learnt to love.


Click to get closer. I have posted a photo and a scan as the true colour is somewhere between them both. Aquamarine being the jewel for March, as I think I have mentioned.The material is the remainder of the material I dyed for the EG workshop, the centre of each spiral is a machine made cord and then all the rest is barred chain.I was trying to give the effect of pieces being drwn into the spiral. The scan (at the bottom) looks badly ironed but it is in fact the shadows in the dye.