Stroking a path with a pattern.

[Ofnuts]

Didn't see Rich's answer, but thinking among the same lines. Use a brush for the nuts, and another one for the metal under them. May I recommend the use of my ofn-brush-strokes-on-path script to have the nuts regularly spaced and evenly dividing your path. In the image below:

• The nut brush was obtained by making a small clip path around a nut, copying to the clipboard and using the clipboard brush in the script above. I asked the script for a 50px spacing and it figured out the 19 brush strokes.
  
• The "ring" was a 60px circle filled with a left-right gradient, from the darker color to the lighter one;copied to the clipboard and using the clipboard brush in Edit > Stroke path
  

   

  RingAndNuts.xcf (Size: 466.17 KB / Downloads: 195)