Beading Class

I had a great time teaching my beading class at the Bismarck Quiltfest. I hope all were able to take home a few of my tips and tricks for getting the stitches on to the fabric.








I pulled this quilt out of the drawer to use in class as examples of beading and I have been inspired to work on it a bit. I have Wednesday off of work this week and the kids will be in daycare. So I have plans on getting the border attached and start working on the applique flowers I have planned for the border.
I have had it out a few times to work on it but have quickly become overwhelmed with the direction it is going. I hope getting the applique in place will get it moving in a direction I like.

Getting back to embellishing...

I knew this year would be busy, a new baby and a 3 year old, I decided to try not to start any major quilts this year and focus on completing some of my UFOs. I have been slowly working on hand quilting a double wedding ring, which does not make for very interesting blogging. But the next quilt on my list should prove to be a bit more stimulating. It is the Spring CQ.. I took a good look at my progress to date and I am not too sure if I like what is going on, but I will persevere. I sewed all of the blocks together and started adding some larger elements.

I found inspiration in some of the dimensional flowers Allison over at Allie's in Stitches has be creating for her Spring CQ. I used 2.5 inch ribbon for my flowers. I have a sprig on the right side of the quilt and I think I will balance that with one on the left.

The used tiger tape is to plan the placement of the embroidered stems.

Applique

I have been working on adding some applique flowers to the block before I do any of the seams.

I am using ultrasuede for the applique so no turning the seams.

Round Robin Block Home

I participated in my first crazy quilt round robin and my block made it home after traveling the world. It is interesting to see the different stitches and ideas each participant brought to my block. Participating in the round robin were Carol, Sandra, Wendy, Jo, Laura and me.

Bead experiments

She has returned. After a long hiatus I have come back to work on my large beaded spring crazy quilt...

I have been working on creating a beaded leaf that I can use as a seam embellishment as well as a variation on the 5 petal flower and even a little bent wire.

Round Robin Block

I finally did it and joined in on a round robin with Crazy Quilters International. Here is my block, it measure 10 inches square and will be traveling around the US and to the UK for some lovely seam treatments. I started the embellishing off with a new seam treatment for me.......

New crazy quilt block

I has been awhile since I have done any crazy quilting and I thought a small block project would get me back into the swing of things. I usually construct my blocks starting in the center and use straight seams. This time I wanted to try out a few curves. The block is started with the print and the fussy cut fabric, I love the way it frames the print.
With the seams turned and the applique tacked down with a little glue stick and pins. I chain stitched around the border of the applique and touched up the print with a little pencil and ink. Now on to the seam embellishment.......

Adding to my bead stash

My crazy quilt is still up on my design wall. (Yes, my studio is in our unfinished basement). Although I have not done much work on it, I have been continuing to find beads to add to my stash...We have several great local bead shops full of wonderful goodies. I have nice stash of seed beads but as always I found a few seed bead tubes with colors that I might not have. (I am to the point where I cant really remember what I have and don't, so on occasion I buy a duplicate) I have been mostly using seed beads for the embellishment on this quilt, but recently have started using beads of various size and shape to fill in and add a bit of variation. I really like the light turquoise flowers I found. They have a center hole that will look great with some fringe . Just buying the beads gives me the itch to pick up this project and keep embellishing.

CQMagOnline

The latest issue of CQMagOnline is on line and I have an article on my beaded crazy quilt. This e-zine is a great resource of information, tutorials, projects and inspiration that no crazy quilter should miss.

Beading Progress

I have been making some progress on my beaded crazy quilt. My head is constantly full of doubt and questions as I work on this quilt. Will it meet the vision I have in my head? Will all of the elements come together? Will I ever finish? Will the embellishments be too heavy? Did I bit off more than I can chew? It is a wonder that I have not scrapped the entire project and moved on to something else. I guess I am determined to finish. I have added some basic stitches along with some lace

I decided to rip out the SRE on this block. It just was not working now to figure out how to cover all the holes left by the stitching.

I decided to pin it up on one of my design walls to see how everything was blending together. The wall was not quite big enough to fit the entire quilt.....

Over all I do like how the quilt is coming together. But looking at it in the photo I think what a mess. It really does look much better in person.

here is is with a little Photoshop editing......

Beading away....

I continue with my plan of getting the basic seam embellishments in place on all of the blocks to my beaded crazy quilt. With 5 in various degrees of embellishment I have 4 left to start. Here is a photo of the latest block. It has been a fun challenge to come up with new beading stitches. The center green bugle bead treatment is one of my new one. It started out as a sketch and worked quite well in beads. I do tend to gravitate back to several traditional stitches, like the feather (a personal favorite), chevron and Cretan. Why did I come up with such an ambitious crazy quilt project? My initial inspiration was from an antique quilt. I did not merely want to recreate this quilt, but use some of the design elements in a modern version. I found the applique floral border particularly striking as it is Incorporated on top of the crazy quilt blocks. As soon as I get each of the block with some basic stitching, I will be sewing everything together and working on the border. Another element that I am using is the play of light and dark fabrics. If you look at the corner detail photo of the antique quilt below you can see the change in fabrics.

Point of no return

You know when you hit that point in a quilt project where you are not sure if things are going well but you have so much time and effort already in the quilt, you are at the point of no return. That is where I am at with my latest beaded crazy quilt. I have all of the blocks pieced and three of the interior blocks with some embellishment, and I just started on the 4th block. And I just don't know if I like the direction the whole quilt is going.
I thought if I form a plan on how to proceed, things might look better. On the remaining blocks I am just going to get my first layer of beading in place. Which means the majority of seams will be covered with only one stitch to start with. I will come back later and add more as needed.

Here is the 4th block....


And a few details that I have added to the other blocks. Here is an applique butterfly that I started. It is done with ultrasudede and really needs some more beads added. I did have a beaded butterfly in this spot but if you check out the earlier photo, it was horribly lopsided that I tore it out and tried this idea. I also added the purple berries they are a mixture of beads and pearl cotton stitching. I found the directions for the berries in Beaded Crazy Quilting, they are quite three dimensional.

And here is a dragonfly done with gold cording, Edmar thread, delica beads and black thread.

I found these great beads a few weeks ago at a local shop, they are tiny ladybugs.

It is funny, I started this post yesterday and when I took the blocks out to snap a few photos today, they didn't look as bad as I thought. Which reinforced my decision to keep on beading away.

Ladybug and butterfly.....

A ladybug and a beaded butterfly have found their way on to my crazy quilt.
I like how the ladybug turned out and see a few more crawling about on the quilt.....
The beaded butterfly needs a bit of an adjustment to one of the bottom wings when/if I ever get to it. But for now it will stay as is. I tried using a pattern but in the end I let the wings evolve as I beaded. First I did an outline of the wings and then filled in wing sections. I sketched a few more butterfly and bug designs to try through out the quilt.

More beaded details

This weekend I continued working on my beaded crazy quilt project. I tried a little SRE. Not too thrilled with the composition of the flowers, seems a little awkward, maybe it is because I have been staring at it trying to figure out how to fix it. But I think I made the SRE flowers too dense in the grouping and the colors of the pink ribbon are too close of a shade. I think I am going to add some SRE buds down each feather stitch and some beads. All of the ribbon is from my hand dying experiments.

This is another angle on the same block as above. I have a few basic stitches in place waiting for more embellishment.

I have been trying to combine different stitching materials to the beading. I added a meandering silk ribbon to some beaded flowers and wove some ribbing through a beaded dashed line.
This stitch was created using two different sizes of bugle beads and was inspired from another blogger (wish I could remember who) posting on the Take a Stitch Tuesday Week 28, the sheaf stitch.

I connected the first two blocks and have been working on integrating the seams

Beaded Embellishment

I have been working on my latest cq, adding some beaded seam embellishments. I don't know if I am crazy adding this many beads to a quilt but it sure is fun. I usually get each block started by trying to cover each seam with one basic stitch and then going back to add a few more beads and other embellishments. On my previous beaded cq, I used strictly beads for the seam treatments, this time I am working with mainly beads and adding in touches of silk ribbon and threads. Hopefully it will all come together.

I am pleased with how this seam treatment turned out. Done on a darker fabric with the lighter beads it is a stand out. These bugle beads are some of my favorite. I have them in two colors the light greenish blue seen here and also a blueish green. They were purchased at the Sioux Trading Post in Rapid City, SD.



This branch and leaf seam treatment turned out so well, that it has expanded to a few other areas of this block and on to the next block. I think it needs some berry or flower details added with some pink or red beads.

Not sure what else to do with this one, but it needs something more.

Here is a variation on a Cretan stitch.

This is one of my favorite beaded stitches, the feather. I usually starts on a seam and then spreads out and grows. Not sure if I like the lighter green beads I was just getting started on here. They seem to stand out on the block. I think the problem is there are not enough of them, so I am sure I will add a few more. This seam treatment now has a green silk ribbon added, weaving around the flowers. But I thought I would show how it started.

More crazy quilting

I spent most of my quilting time over the long weekend working on my latest crazy quilt.


I like how the leaf seam treatment turned out, I will be adding some curly tendrils to fill out the design. I also worked on adding some embellishment to the lace in the corner.

The silk ribbon seam treatment was done with some of my hand painted ribbon. I have never done much SRE and can see that I will need to start expanding my ribbon stash to do more.

Weekend Work

I spent most of my quilting time this weekend working on a few beaded seam embellishments on my latest crazy quilt. Here are a few details.....

I am a very much design as I go when it comes to seam embellishment.


Right now I am getting some basic stitches in place, then I will go back and add details. Most of the embellishment will be beaded, but I have added some thread and silk ribbon stitches.

This is the center of the block, I am not thrilled with the stitching so far, but will leave it for now until I figure out how to fix it. I like the fact that is goes on and off the seam line, but when looking at the block from a distance, the detail get lost. I think it is because the embellishment around it are so strong and it is rather subtle.

This seam is done with some silk ribbon that I dyed. I see it surrounded by leaves and other floral details. But I am holding of as I dont know what I want to add to the curvy beaded line. I think I made it too much of a curve back and forth but again it will stay for now. If I ripped out everything I was dissatisfied with, I would never get anywhere.

I started embellishing on a second block from the quilt. Here are the two embellished blocks so far.......