I forgot that I wanted to add Stephanie Sersich’s website in my previous post. She’s the lady (from Portland, Maine, no less) who invented this technique and teaches both Bracelet and Necklace classes. She travels the US to teach, so we’re lucky that she is here in Maine and teaches at the Beadin’ Path regularly. Her glass beads are to die for!

It was supposed to be a bracelet. I don’t DO bracelets…they make me crazy, banging and flapping and generally being a nuisance and getting in the way. Here’s a picture of what I had at the end of a 4 hour class….considering how long it takes to put together a quilt, I felt this was moving at lightning speed!

But Hilary Ervin, a member of Art Quilts Maine, had been making these incredible bracelets during or bi-monthly AQM meetings. And I kept thinking about them…..so finally I asked. And then Deborah Boschert figured out that the lady who taught the class was teaching at The Beadin Path in Freeport (also home to LL Bean). The teacher is Stephanie Sersich—see the post for March 20th for the hotlink to her website. So I signed up right away, despite the cost because (tippety tap) I had just sold my Brooks and Branches piece at the Ducktrap Bay Trading Company and decided I deserved just a bit of a splurge!

Having looked at Hilary’s bracelets, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to modify it (there I go changing things) into a necklace. I bought some lucite / vintage lucite beads and things via the Beadin’ Path website, and figured I’d buy anything else I needed the morning before the class (the store is almost 2 hours away, so didn’t want to spend 4 hours and a lot of gas money just to buy beads). I will not confess how much I spent on beads. Let’s just say it’s a good thing two more small pieces sold (quite unexpectedly…I wasn’t anticipating any sales until summer—yeah!) last month, to help cover my indulgences.

Here’s a picture of the whole thing:

And a close up of the fancy part:

And, believe it or not, finally a picture of me wearing the necklace, which you can barely see because I’m holding my wonderful new digital camera, the Panasonic DMC-FZ30!

for having fun at the conception end of things….. We did our annual parental pennance this past Sunday, which just happened to be Eli’s actual 8th birthday! Sunday, you say? Aren’t most kids parties on Saturday? Yes, my friends, they are. But Eli had karate in the morning, overlapping Joshua’s wrestling meet which ran until between 2 and 3, and we couldn’t face the idea of then coming home to a house full of boy-kids full of sugar from 3-5. So, it was a party on Sunday!

Here’s Eli, first thing Sunday morning, tearing into the most recent upsurge in Lego stock values thanks to his generous Aunt Joyce and Uncle TJ and his parents. This was supplemented later in the day by his friends. There is no such thing, it appears, as too many legos, particularly of the Bionicle / Exoforce variety (personally, Mom prefers the Harry Potter sets, especially the original Hagrid’s hut…. but I digress).

We scheduled the party to begin at 1:30 to permit his best friends, twins Ben and Kyle (who also happen to be very LOUD) to attend after a church / first communion class. Still….have you ever heard of a kid turning down pizza? Neither have we. And if you feed then, they tear around and shout a bit (but not a lot) less. Then, Paul and Joshua–bless them!–took the six 2nd graders outside for a good game of catch, before cake and presents.

Eli is currently learning about Africa and African animals, so he did the drawing of a giraffe and African trees at Sunset, which I scanned into the computer and turned into the birthday party invitations. He then asked for a cake with African animals–giraffes or elephant–at sunset. Presto…this is the part of kids’ parties that are FUN….getting creative with the cake! I love playing with food coloring! After the party, all four of us…even the boys….retreated blissfully to separate, quiet rooms until dinner.

Eli is a joy and a wonder. And it’s a lot more fun to celebrate his birthday than go through labor again LOL!

Terry Grant, of And Sew It Goes, asked how others have dealt with small works. After I typed my reply, I though it might make a good post here and then I could illustrate it, too! I have:

Hung them on a small dowel or slat, like I did with my Straight and Narrow piece (10 inches wide by 50 something long), Brooks and Branches (sold):

stretched cloth over stretcher bars, then stitched the quilt to the cloth

Painted a “gallery wrap” canvas (the ones with the staples on the back, not the sides) to continue the colors / theme of the quiltlet, then stitched the quilt to the canvas ..here are several: Moonlight (sold), Hot August Night–Plum, Man, and Red Summer Roses,

Purchased 1/4″ thick plexiglass cut to size, *very carefully* drilled small holes for hanging and stitching on, and stitched the piece to float on top of the plexi. This photo is of the quilt only….the picture of it on plexi is awful. The plexiglas extends about 3 inches on all sides. The mint color you see is a Photoshop background color so it blends onto my web page.

Fused fabric to timtex that works with the piece for Red Sea Nautilus (sold) and stitched the piece to that.

Mounted pieces to black foam core (stitched) and framed them in inexpensive silver frames (did that with the At Anchor postcards).

It depends on the pieces….If I were to wrap stretcher bars again, I’d probably choose a heavy weight fabric as you did, or do muslin, then batting, then cloth…I don’t like the way the black cotton wraps over the bars…looks lumpy.

I really like the plexi, but it words better with a contemporary or abstract style, which I don’t do too often.

For the gallery wrap canvases, I (sigh) prefer the look of the 2″-ish deep canvases, not the regular depth, and cost twice as much as the “regular” ones.

So what do the rest of you do?

Some time back, I posted my most recent wall piece, Earth and Turquoise. It is based on a poem by N. Scott Momaday. Today, Jen told me that she had found her tape and transcribed the poem on her blog! Click here to go read it on Jen’s blog. Oh my goodness…..what words, what imagery! And I’m thrilled that I made corn stalks on it, and then in the poem—unbeknownst to me at the time—he talks about planting corn! So would it be too corny (pun NOT intended) beyond words for me to try to contact Mr. Momaday and share a picture of my quilt with him?????

To see the original posts on Earth and Turquoise, click on the link in the side bar (on the right of the screen) for the January Archives and scroll to January 25 and 29. Just to remind you, though I added the picture at the top. In deference to not being arrested, I removed the stripey feather, which a friend found in the woods and is apparently a hawk feather, and therefore not legal to possess. Sigh.