A fun morning with Mary Stori

On Tuesday morning, I traveled to the Lake Oconee Quilter’s Guild meeting to hear a talk by Mary Stori.    She is a wonderful writer and speaker and provided a fun morning…..
Her talk was entitled “Let It Shine” and in less than 45 minutes, she had me hooked on the idea  of using beads on my quilts.  She told us that the two secrets to beading are spacing and stabilizing, and then she proceeded to show many examples of how to accomplish these tasks.
She encouraged us to make sure that the beads were well integrated into the quilt….either as the focal design or as embellishments designed to enhance the project.  She also encouraged us to use different types and sizes of beads to bring more texture to the project.
These are some of my favorite quilts that she showed……
You may need to click on this photo to be able to actually see the beads, but they are scattered carefully over this simple trapunto quilt and just add SO much to the design….. This quilt is called “Fish Sticks” and is WONDERFUL!!!!!
This little bead and button garden was so cute……

Finally, this parrot really captured my imagination……Now, I have never tried beading before and never really thought that I wanted to, but I am starting to re-think that philosophy.  We are going to be in China for 5 weeks this year and I have been trying to figure out what I could take to work on, but now I am thinking about creating a quilt top with simple fused flower shapes and taking beads to embellish it with.  Who knows, I might even find a good bead source while I am there.
SO, it seems that driving to this talk was a good CHOICE for the first Tuesday of 2011!!!!!