Fashion designers have the luxury of last minute changes, thanks to the transportability of a needle and thread. Not so for jewelry designers, who must rely on expensive, immobile equipment and other highly specialized tools.

So when Canadian jewelry designer Myles Mindham learned that the gown Measha Brueggergosman was scheduled to wear to perform at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games had been nixed, he knew that a challenge of Olympian proportions lay ahead.

The original one-shoulder gown by Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared had been replaced by strapless gold silk lame. The oversized earrings with interlocking O motif that Mindham had created were perfect with the one-shoulder silhouette, but a strapless dress? That screamed out for a necklace, and Mindham had to act fast.

Complicating matters was the fact that when the finished dress arrived the color of the fabric had been switched and the white gold earrings clashed.

With a little over three weeks to go, Mindham scrambled to assemble an 18 kt gold collar set with 41 carats of peridot and 232.62 carats of prasiolite. He also dismounted 36.15 carats of golden beryl from the earrings so the white metal could be given a yellow gold wash.

"It just shows what you can do when the pressure is on," Mindham explained from his studio in Toronto's Yorkville district.

The resulting jewelry was as striking and exuberant as Brueggergosman's rendition of the Olympic anthem.

Mindham has been outfitting Brueggergosman for several years. It was shortly after her emergency open heart surgery in 2009 that Mindham was summoned by the soprano to a poker game with friends. "She said, 'I need you to sign something,' then pulled out a confidentiality agreement. I signed it then she showed me the sketch of the dress and said she needed something to go with it."

The soprano also wore Mindham's eight stone citrine bracelet and a 116.38 carat citrine ring surrounded by diamonds. That's an Olympic ring of an entirely different sort.