Beading 101

Saturday I taught a beading class at my local quilt shop. I wanted a project that was fun and small enough that it would get finished someday. The ornament is a great motivator and can definately be accomplished by Christmas. It started as a 3" square that I then stamped in setacolor paint with a holly stamp I made myself using fun foam and a wood base. Bead the holly following the outline, add your vines using DMC floss in a stem stitch, bind, and finish with a beaded hang and tassle. Voila, instant gift made with love.

The class seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and I had lots of yummy beaded show and tell for them to ooooh/aaaah over. I think we all know and agree that is the most important part!

Below is another example of how to dress up a simple block for yourself or a gift. A simple 9 patch with each square cut at 3" ends up at 8" square to fit into a purchased 8" square frame. I quilted it with an X design in each of the red squares and then beaded the white squares. Depending on how much beading you choose to do, you could reverse this and have 5 hearts.

Both of these ideas are simple, fun, relatively quick and allow you to take advantage of all the wonderful beads out there that are calorie-free candy!
Enjoy and happy beading.