Not these kind of buttons!

Hope you were able to take a little time from your busy day to celebrate. If not, join me for some eye candy and enjoy what I did to celebrate buttons today (fabric cover-buttons, of course. My favorite kind of buttons!) They’re samples for some of my upcoming Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Cover-Button Jewelry workshops.

Takumi Brooch

Takumi Mini Purse, view 1

Takumi Mini Purse, view 2

Hope you enjoyed your mini tour of Button Wonderland. Where did I find that gorgeous fabric, you say? Glad you asked. It’s from Kona Bay Fabrics’ Takumi Collection. And yes, for those of you enrolled in one of my upcoming workshops, it will be available in the workshop kits.

Actually, none of the above. (Although beads would make a fabulous subject for a fabric print.)  Beading Arts is featuring Fiber Jewelry Artists for the month of September and I’m today’s Featured Artist. Check out the article on the Beading Arts website.

happy beading!

A Cuppa Beads
©2010 by Laura West Kong

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.

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

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! =(^_^)=

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! =(^_^)=

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