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!

LATE JULY ALREADY????

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and much else has happened. I am nearly finished with my June page..... it still needs some yellow beads in the center, but the white daisy is done... it was fun to create textures on each petal. I spent much of the month working on the photos from my friend's wedding, so it is appropriate that it is a white wedding flower!

I decided to use photos of flowers that I had printed on fabric run through my own ink jet printer. The fabric that I buy is already adhered to a piece of paper which I leave on as stabilizer. I am really pleased with the process. Since I'm working so large, it's harder to get my hand around the paper, but it smooshes up pretty well.
The center of a daisy already looks like it's beaded, so that has me somewhat stumped. I think I am going to use beads in a star shape and then fill in, using graduated sizes. We'll see what the beads tell me to do!
And my July page is more than half done..... it's also a flower, but this time it's an iris. The center was pretty difficult and I used 15's so it went pretty slowly. But now I am doing the petals and using 10's and 8's so it is filling in faster. I am really pleased with the look so far.
My idea for the "finished product" is to make a wall quilt of these flowers. We'll see.... they may need to be in an album for a while, but eventually, they will probably be in a wall quilt.
Can't figure out how to move photos around in this blog, so they are all at the top.... sorry.
K