Vision Gap

Ah, beading...you are so addictive. What starts out simple begins to build, more ideas, more beads... This is what I worked on today, thinking that as long as the 8 x 10 background was quilted, I could quickly add the beads I had in mind to enhance the pin and play out my idea. Alas, it is not taking shape as envisioned, not moving quickly either, and I fear the beads added today will be removed and redone tomorrow. I would despair if not for my beading mentor, Mary Stori, who also sometimes beads with optimism only to unbead and try something different. I think I've identified the problem and there's not too much to undo. In the picture above, I've set out the beads I bought for the project, shoving them around in approximation of how they will be positioned - too closely it has turned out. I've marked some guidelines with the white Clover pen that disappears with either dry heat or steam. I may be redrawing them as well.


I'm still operating a bit disjointedly, but when I get an uncontrollable urge after so many months of no uncontrollable urges, I feel I must act. Since the beading needed to stop while I pondered what was going on with it, and there was still time to fill, I took the first steps on my Palouse contours idea. I'd done a drawing from memory in my bigger sketchbook (above) and have been thinking of ways I could transfer the design for quilting. Remembering Mary Stori's trick of basting along the main lines to provide a guide for beading, I thought I could do the same for the quilting. So I spent some time with tracing paper over the sketchbook page to transfer the design. I'll scan it into the computer for future reference (I'm thinking I may want to play with it in a larger size), then pin it to the back to do the basting. All along I've intended this to be a hand quilted piece, but I may change my mind and machine quilt from the back. Yes, I can see I may need to do some samples.