End of August

Well, it's been a while. I just can't seem to get into this blog thing. I have been working on my July page, and finished it. It was really intense. I started out thinking that I would only bead part of the purple on the page, but as I did more, it became obvious that I had to fill in all the purple. That little 6x6 is really heavy!!! A little more "literal" than I had wanted, but I am pleased with it. I have been listening to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on tape while I've been beading..... really helps my concentration, and I find that I tune in and catch things I didn't get when I read it the first time.


In the month of August, we also had our county fair. It was a fabulous experience as usual. It's an old-timey little fair, and we get to visit with friends, acquaintances and neighbors that we don't usually get to spend time with. This is a picture of my friend Megan showing her mother, Betty, the quilts and other displays in our department. They were so sweet together. This photo represents to me the best of our little town and fair.

I am co-superintendent with my friend, Christy, of the Textile Department. This department includes all quilts and anything sewn or made that STARTS with fabric. I have been a superintendent for over 25 years, and it's almost second nature now. I am blessed to have a great group of friends and fellow-quilters who help with the logisitics of the department. We are so thankful to have them! The weather was cool, but only rained one evening during the fair. We had a wonderful five days!

So since the fair, I have begun my August page for the Bead Journal Project. I started out with the center of my sunflower. I wanted to do something three dimensional, so chose some little gold colored washers and made stacks of brown beads with a gold bead on the top of the stack. I really like the way it looks, but as most of you have already learned, if you do the stacks first, you get tangled in them for all the rest of the beading you do! LOL! Well, I am still glad I did them, because I like them soooo much that it keeps me working on it. I am enjoying the process with this one more than the previous two. I think I am also growing in terms of my beading technique.

So, since then I have outlined each petal, and filled in part of them with a variety of fan-like beading images. These were tricky to do since the petals are a variety of widths, and the square beads I was using for the "center" of the fan are a variety of sizes and shapes. So I decided to have the fans stack in a random kind of way. I also realized that I might not have enough of the SAME beads to use in all of the petals, so decided to do 9 of the petals intensely and figure out what to do in the alternate petals later. Maybe something a little different.... maybe nothing at all. I will be glad to take suggestions! ;-)

So that's where it stands as of this moment, until I get to a big bead supply. I live out in the boondocks..... literally at least 2 hours from anything! We do have a bead store in town, but it's limited, and when you know what's out 'there", it makes it hard to settle for something just because it's here. I did find some little metallic stars to use around the edge of the center of the sunflower. I am playing with how to mount them..... the hole goes in one side of the star between points and OUT the other side on the point, so it's hard to get them to sit any particular way. I may have to touch them with a dot of nail polish to get them to stay!