And now for something completely different

A long time ago I used to do a lot of beading. All kinds of beading - weaving, applique, loomwork, stringing - everything. But after awhile I realized that it's hard to sell bead work because of the amount of time involved drove the price up to where most people can't afford it. I changed over to working with silver and only incorporated some beads in my silver work. In a recent studio purge I almost got rid of my thousands of tubes and hanks of seed beads, but decided to just put them in a closet. I'm glad I did.

I have a close friend, Posie Dauphine, who is a talented art quilter. She and her husband made a trip to Morocco and the beautiful ancient mosaics she saw inspired her to remember that trip with a quilt. She had taken a photo of a mosaic chicken and wanted to reproduce that design on her quilt with beads. She came over to my studio and I showed her how to do applique work and let her choose beads from my collection. This was over a year ago.

After nearly finishing the quilt she finally realized that she was never going to do that beaded chicken. She gave the whole thing back to me to do for her.

I reduced her photo, cut it out and pinned it to the piece of hand woven and embroidered fabric that she also brought back from Morocco. This will serve as the pattern for the beading. Below is a bad photo of the entire quilt, with the pieces pinned on. That gives you and idea of what the finised quilt will look like.

This is a great project to work on during these snowy days. I'd forgotten how much I love to do beading. I'll post pictures when it's finished.