Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Bee, Myself & I in January

I've been missing the little bead embroidered pieces I used to do each month for the Bead Journal Project. For my Bee, Myself & I projects in 2018 I've decided to resurrect that effort. Bee, Myself and I is a forum for selfish sewing: anything that is purely for pleasure, not for a cause or charity, and with no other end point than what I determine. Carla over at Granny Maud's Girl was the inspired maker who started the effort. 😊

The focus of the BJP was to use beads in an intuitive way. I want to return to using my beads (and sequins and charms!) but I want to expand the parameters of these little projects - the operative word being 'little'.

We were encouraged to choose a size and format to stick to throughout the duration of each year of the BJP. One year I used a diamond shape...


And another year I made ATC's:



I've decided that this year I will allow myself to use whatever shape or size feels right at the time. To that end, one day this month I pulled out the empty holiday popcorn tin where I toss my small batik scraps and just started piecing.



This is what I ended up with:


The heart shape was the one that spoke to me the loudest.


I did the feather stitching first, using some of Nancy's hand dyed flosses (of course). Then I seed stitched the yellow patch, and then added the beads and sequins.

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The green patch in the upper right has had a couple different treatments, both of which have since been removed because I wasn't happy with them. I may end up facing and turning this before I make a final decision about how to handle that. As it is, I'm probably going to have some trouble with that process. I wasn't thinking about seam allowances when I began embellishing. I've toyed with the idea of appliqueing the heart to some other foundation, which might alleviate the seam allowance issue, but haven't entirely made up my mind yet. I'm giving myself permission to leave it as it is for the time being. As far as I'm concerned, I've fulfilled the parameters of my Bee sewing even if I don't have a finished product. Besides, I got distracted by Halloween prints! 😉

4 comments:

  1. It's lovely, so pretty, and a perfect choice of direction for your BM&I work. Does it have to stay as a single heart? Only I was looking at the green and wondering if you could overlap that bit with other embellished hearts to make a grouping, which might solve the problem.

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  2. Lovely to do something random,no pressing urgency, and follow whatever develops. It is lovely.
    Maybe applique to a background and have it as a wall-hanging when the others are done.

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  3. This is so sweet - you can put it to one side until you've done some others and probably a solution will present itself out of the blue.

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  4. Your heart is great, and so is the log cabin block. What fun these are - almost like doing the CQJP!

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