Making Fabric Beads

Here are the beads that I made today at our FiberArtBee. We had so much fun making these. We meet once a month and play with something new to experiment with. Margaret taught us how to make these beads today.
This is me making the beads. We found some wonderful glitter paint and went crazy with it. To make the beads, you start with a one inch piece of a drinking straw. We then covered them with fabric (cut 1 by 2) by painting glue on the fabric and then wrapping them around the straw. After they dried, we wrapped fiber around them, using a dab of glue to anchor the knot. Then we painted. Most of us loved the glitter paint and used it on all the beads.

This is a great group and I look forward to our meeting every month.

Longarm Quilting Class

I went to Snellville today for a longarm quilting class. Nichole Webb is here in Georgia from Washington teaching for four days. I have signed up for two days of classes and will go again tomorrow. It is about 37 miles for me to drive and I allowed 1:45 which should have been plenty of time but I was a couple of minutes late - will leave earlier tomorrow. Traffic in the Atlanta area is brutal. I am so glad I don't have to commute to a job daily.

The class was great - we drew and sewed many different overall quilting patterns. I have a practice cloth but it is too dark tonight to take pictures of it. Will try to do it tomorrow. Taking the class at the Gammill dealer means that we each have our own machine to work on. That is much better than most longarm classes where you have to share machines.

July Calendar

I decided to try to keep a journal. Each month I plan to draw a calendar page and decorate it as I write in it each month. I have never been faithful doing something like this but made it thru July and have started on August. I think it will be interesting to review it in the future.

4x4 Alphabet Swap

I got the first part of the alphabet swap back from the CPS Yahoo group. We are doing it in 3 parts. I had A for the first group. Won't it be fun to have an alphabet book of art like these great pages? They are 4x4 inches.

FiberArtBee - Flower Pounding

FiberArtBee was a couple of weeks ago but I kept forgetting to post a picture of what we did. We decided to pound flowers. Not everyone in the group was excited about it but it turned out that everyone had a great time, except maybe the people who were not pounding but just hearing it.

This is the first time any of us had done this but we all had such fun that I think we will do it again.


I need to decide what I want to do to finish this and what I want it to be. The flower part is about 12-14 inches and is on a larger square. I want to do some pen work to define the flowers, and then think I will play with quilting it. I have thought about adding beads but can't make up my mind.

It is really interesting how the color of the flowers change when they are pounded. The large flowers on my piece are rose petals. One rose was red and the other was pink.

In August we are going to play with making fiber and tyvek beads - should be another fun day.