Stitchin' and Rippin'

While I've been waiting for my goodies to arrive from Shipwreck Beads for my journal quilt I have been working on Colleen's Bead Round Robin block. I'm the third person to embellish it; there are two more participants before Colleen gets it back. I didn't think to establish a theme for the block I sent out. Colleen did, and I was delighted by it: things that would be found in a lady's boudoir or dressing room! I thought that was original and fun. Someone before me had put on a hand mirror charm and charms for sunglasses and a comb. I found a purse charm in my stash and put that on. While I was going through the S. Beads catalog the other day I discovered that there were tons of charms that would be appropriate for this block! It was hard not to buy a bunch of them! (Hopefully Colleen will read this and go check it out for herself if she wants more on her block.)

I did not think to take a 'before' picture of the block before I started beading on it. That's okay though, because today I took out everything I did on it yesterday. This was after writing in my journal this morning, "I am determined not to take it all out to do over again. There's doing quality work and then there's tyrannical perfectionism. Taking it out and doing it over would be bowing to Perfectionism." Well, guess who kowtowed. I just couldn't bear the color imbalance I had created. So I took off what I'd done and moved it over to the other side of that section of the block. (I'm going to maintain some illusion of secrecy by not being specific about the beads I'm talking about. It's unusual for me to reveal as much as I have. I'm sure there are those out there who will figure out exactly what I did!) At least the beading went more quickly the second time around!

So here's the before picture.

And here it is after I did my bit. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to do something with that dark patch with the lace on it at the bottom of the picture (the patch is actually a lavender in real life). I bought beads specifically for that seam. Did I end up using them? No. Oh well; they weren't that expensive and I'll undoubtedly use them somewhere else someday. As I finished up that seam treatment I realized I had unwittingly copied an element I'd seen on someone else's block I had worked on. That's good; I'm learning! One of the benefits of round robin projects like this is the opportunity to see how other artists think and work and maybe pick up pointers from them. (If you click on the picture you should get a larger image.)

My treasures arrived from Shipwreck Beads today while I was stitching on the last seam treatment on Colleen's block. The pictures of the beads and charms in the catalog are probably as close to life size as they can be expected to be but, in person, a couple of the things I'd bought on spec look too big for my journal quilt. I haven't played with it a lot yet so we'll see what happens in a day or two. Tomorrow is the day DH and I have set aside to celebrate our birthdays - which are a mere 5 days (and 5 years) apart. We're not sure yet what we'll do to celebrate but it's unlikely I'll get much stitching done. Typically our celebrations are pretty tame. A movie, maybe, and lunch out somewhere. Except that tomorrow is Saturday and the whole world will be out and about. That's dangerous for me anymore. So we'll see whether one of us can come up with some other, more creative, option! (Maybe he'll give me lessons in digital photography so I can get better, clearer pix and good detail shots!)