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AWOL?

No…I haven’t been AWOL! (Absent without leave for those of you who haven’t been in the military or federal service!)….

Over the weekend I started working on the beading on a quilt, which, alas, I can’t show you (grumble grumble!). It is my entry for the Viking competition, and according to the rules cannot be published anywhere including one’s website. I’m playing it safe and assuming that also means not on blogs, either. Durn. But I can TELL you about it, and will (change that to won’t…decided to delete the photos…sigh) flirt dangerously with the edge of the prohibitions by sharing three close-up shots since NO ONE would be able to know what the whole quilt looks like!

According to the rules, the quilt must be 51×51 inches square. Hmm….square is an awkward shape for most “art” quilt compositions. Challenge number one. Then, I began some small blocks in an improvisational class with Dianne Hire last summer, when serendipity stepped in and I got to be her assistant for a week at a quilt camp (lucky me!). Well…..what to do. The blocks are fairly “not me” in style, but wanted to do something with them. Challenge number two. Got the idea to use them in the Viking effort….except they worked up waaaaayyyyyy too small–under 40 inches square I think. Challenge number 3. So added borders, and border, and border.

This quilt is SO not me in so many ways, though I’ve tried to make it “me”…I don’t usually do red, I’ve NEVER had this much beading on anything, and I’ve never used sequins before! I love how the sequins worked as fish scales. For the head, I used very small flat 3 mm sequins with a stop-bead; for the tail, the larger sequins were translucent, so I placed a smaller opaque 3 mm green sequin under the clear-ish yellow 5mm sequin, then held them on with a stop-bead (a seed bead–bring thread up through the holes of both sequins and into one side of the seed bead, then go back down into the quilt sandwich through the holes in the sequins and snug up). Anyway, that’s it…has taken about five days to do the beading (OK….I’ll confess I’ve been HORRID about getting to work this week, so lots of dithering around, but still…..five days have elapsed!). By the way, to find another way to fritter away your cash, check out Cartwright’s Sequins, which is where I got these. That Quiltart list will get you in trouble on a routine basis if you let it, LOL!

I finally got back to the Tableau quilt today and sewed the stable building. Tomorrow, I will try to stitch the mountains and make the background, then back to the figures, and animals and and and…..pictures tomorrow I hope!

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