Day 131 – Beaded Lace

Remember the pretty cool design Lacy Lattice and Honeycomb variation from a few days ago?

I decided we needed one more variation with even more texture and so here is Beaded Lace:

Today I’m pulling quilts together and packing boxes for my lecture. I’m pretty excited, a little nervous, but overall just really ready to go talk and share about quilting!

When I wasn’t packing yesterday, I finally got a firmer design sketched of “My Cup Runneth Over“.

After walking through the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden and looking at the fountains and choppy water, I decided that I wanted the flowing water in the bottom of the quilt to be patchwork.

I’ve never done anything like this and it was extremely fun to design. Mostly I sketched this freehand, but to get the second set of lines I played with using different sheets of paper laid over the original so I wouldn’t have to erase as much.

I use a light box when I’m designing in order to get certain parts symmetrical, like her head and shoulders. I’ve recently rearranged my office so my lightbox is right behind my office chair and I have no excuse now not to turn around, turn it on and start drawing.

As for the patchwork water, no clue how I’m going to do that yet. It looks to me like paper piecing might come in handy, so I’m going to start playing around with some different ideas.

I really want the water to be a gradual progression from light to dark blue fabrics of many different shades so the water looks like a real mosaic of color.

Okay, enough dreaming over this new quilt, let’s learn how to stitch Beaded Lace!

Inspiration – After looking at Lacy Lattice, I knew there was one more variation I could do.

Unlike Honeycomb, I think you could stitch this variation in both the top and bottom of the tear drop shapes for an even cooler design. Try it and see what it looks like!

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This is definitely one of those designs that looks harder than it actually is. Just keep everything consistent sizes and shapes and you’ll be just fine.

Design Family – Edge to Edge. This design is stitched from one edge of your quilting space to another. This means that this design will work really well in most open, uncomplicated areas of your quilt.

Directional Texture – 2 directions. This design has a very obvious horizontal or vertical texture that can add a nice movement to your quilt without being too overwhelming.

Suggestions for Use – I’m thinking this Beaded Lace design would work great as a little touch of texture right along the edge of a quilt or jacket.

Come to think of it, I never did make myself a second quilted jacket! Hmmm…What color would I want….