adventures of a quilting diva

Just started on the beaded binding. I’ve got a deadline next week for this, so I’ve been working on little else. Here’s how it’s coming along:

Great guesses on what border fabric I chose! If it didn’t take so long to finish the panel, I would want to try them all out!

My border is a black-on-white polka dot. As I was embroidering I was actually thinking of a multi-color African print for the border, but somehow the polka dots jumped out at me when it came time to add the border. Then I decided to quilt the border with seed beads. … Speaking of seed beads, today’s tip is about choosing batting for beaded quilt wallhangings.

Check out the detail below. There are two different batting effects at play here:

I used black wool felt as the batting for the embroidery panel. Wool felt comes in several thicknesses and many different colors. (Choose a matching felt and if the fibers beard a bit you won’t notice it.) Wool felt is easy to pull the needle through and supports the beadwork very well.

The border was an experiment. It has two layers of Warm & Natural cotton batting. This also supports beadwork well, but gives a different effect. Look carefully and you’ll see that the nylon beading thread carried between the layers creates a bit of puckering like you would get on antique quilts (and new ones as well) when the batting shrinks in the wash. If you’d like the puckered antique look, but don’t want to wash your beadwork (dyed beads can bleed in the wash), this would be the way to go. I haven’t tested this technique with a single layer of cotton batting yet, I needed the heft of two layers to support the wool felt batting in the embroidered block.

The more beads you sew onto your quilt, the more support you’re going to need, so consider all your batting options (including non-traditional ones) before you begin beading. You could even sew a handful of beads on a sample sandwich or two to test the battings out first.

I’ve been doing a lot of bead embroidery these days so here are some tips for those of you who’d like to do more bead embellishment on your quilts but might be intimidated by all those pesky supplies you have to go out and buy.

Conventional beader’s wisdom say that you should always match your beading thread to your beads. That’s nice in theory and works well when you’re stitching down a lot of beads that are the same color.

However, if you’re anything like me, you can’t resist those yummy bead soup mixes. How do you match your thread to that? Are you really supposed to buy thread to match all the hues in your bead box? Even worse, imagine switching your needle and thread with each and every bead you stitch down!

Smile, beading is supposed to be a stress-reducer, not a stress-inducer. Here are some easy things you can do to save both your sanity and your wallet:

• Buy your beading thread in a few versatile neutrals such as gray for medium to dark beads and cream for light beads.
• If you’re a hand quilter (or even if you’re not), hand quilting thread is strong and works great for sewing beads onto quilts.



• Try matching (or blending, it doesn’t have to be exact) your thread to the background fabric instead.
• Go wild and use contrasting thread as a design element.

Whatever you do, have fun and just bead it!

More bead embellishment tips here ~ Tip Tuesday: Just Bead It! Sep. 22, 2009

Here’s a tip for trying out new embellishment techniques: Make really small quilt sandwiches so you can get right to the fun stuff. This gives you a taste of the process as well as the satisfaction of finishing a project quickly. (The mini wall hanging on the right is just 4″ x 6″ without the beaded fringe.)

By the time you are finished with the mini, you will most likely be good enough at the technique to use it without fear on a quilt that you’ve already invested many hours in. You can decide if you like the technique enough to commit to a regular-size quilt. It will also help you decide which quilt to use the technique on.

If you try out different variations on many minis you will have a whole library of techniques (that you can see and touch) to choose from when it comes time to embellish your regular-size wall hangings. Of course you might just enjoy the small projects so much that you don’t want to go back to larger pieces. A group of minis artfully arranged on a wall would look fabulous!

I created this quilt as a sample for my new workshop, Bling Your Bindings! which is all about embellished binding techniques. The binding featured on this sample is Inside-Out Beaded Binding.

happy embellishing! =(^_^)=

Donut beads are some of my favorite jewelry components. They also make fab art quilt embellishments. Here are a selection from my bead stash: clockwise from top center, 25mm Amethyst, 15mm Unakite, 14mm Green Aventurine, 20mm New Jade, 15mm Red Aventurine, 10mm Red Aventurine, 10mm New Jade, 15mm Leopardskin Jasper, 20mm New Jade (all donuts shown are from Fire Mountain Gems and Beads).There are 2 easy ways you can attach donut beads to a quilt without glue:
1). sew them to the quilt top with decorative thread or floss
2). hang them from a beaded dangle

Donuts as Surface Embellishment

Simply stitch through the donut’s hole with your favorite topstitching or pearl thread. You could even use fancy embroidery stitches or nylon beading thread and seed beads to stitch the stone donut down.

When beading a dangle, instead of using a single seed bead at the end of the dangle for a stop bead, string on enough beads to hold the stone donut and then bring the needle and thread back up through the rest of the beads on the dangle.
Donut beads are also made from glass, metal, shell and much more. What’s more, donut beads are calorie-free! =(^_^)=

Who is ready to have some fun?

Nancy Eha the Queen Mother of Royal Order of Bead Explorers, announces the Embellished Tiara Challenge. You can bead, paint, fuse, foil, collage, stitch, dye, anything goes! Just use the challenge tiara pattern and the challenge bead packet as a starting point.

There is no entry fee, but there are fantastic prizes. Two Viewers’ Choice fabric embellishment prize packages each worth over $200 will be awarded. Voting will be done by Nancy Eha’s eNews subscribers. Details about the Embellished Tiara Challenge can be found at Nancy Eha’s web site: www.beadcreative.com

I’m still stitching away on my African Folklore Embroidery piece. It’s coming along slowly but surely. I really like doing hand work. I should bring it along with me in my purse so I can work on it here and there. You may not be able to see it, but I’ve done some itty-bitty beading on the mama’s necklace. I’ll need to find somewhat larger beads for the eyes.

The March issue of Cotton Spice was released today on PDF. Here is my project, found on page 14, a needle keeper that for all you beaders out there, also holds tubes of beads and doubles as a beading mat. There are quite a few quilt patterns as well. I flipped through it with the intent of choosing my favorite one so I could tell you all about it, but could not decide. So you’ll have to go to www.cottonspice.com (it’s free!) and decide for yourself.

This weekend we attended a birthday party complete with a petting zoo. Annika liked holding the bunnies, but I couldn’t resist the chocolate brown Merino lambs (below).

(Actually according to Morehouse Farm, brown sheep are actually black sheep whose wool has been bleached from being out in the sunshine.) Brown or black, I wanted to give those lambs a good shearing and go play with my needle felting machine.

Here’s a peek at my California Beadin’ piece for my guild’s spring challenge. If the dates for turning pieces in don’t overlap I might enter it into the California-themed exhibit at the new IQA show in Long Beach.

I’ve also been working on my Quilt Every Day Rail Fence quilt, although (confession time) not quite every day. I can’t believe I forgot and missed two whole days out of the first week. I did some extra tonight to make up for it though, and I can see a lot of progress. I wonder which quilt top I’m going to practice my free motion quilting on first this summer? I’m glad to see that quite a few of you are also making good progress on your 10 minutes of quilting a day. It takes just 3 weeks to make a new habit. This could mean the end of the ever-growing UFO stack and the beginning of lots of finished quilts!