Greetings, My Little Chickadees!
I’m always happy to have a chance to talk beads, so I was deeply honored when Lyric Kinard asked if I would write a bit about her new adventure – an instructional DVD about beading on fabric, specifically quilts. I’ve known Lyric for some time, and consider her to be a bright shining light on the contemporary quilt scene – full of talent and enthusiasm. But more importantly, I consider her a friend. And one of the things we have in common is a love of beading.
Ask any room full of beaders any question, and you’ll get lots of different answers. What thread do they like? Which needles do they use? What tools do they like to have handy? Lyric’s DVD starts out with a discussion of the things she likes to use, including why she likes them. And then she gets to the fun stuff – the stitches. Her instructions are clear, and easy to understand and follow. Even a complete novice would be able to work along with her and complete the stitches. She covers such things as single beads, back stitching straight lines and curves, dealing with bugles and big chunky beads, stacks and fringe, and a bezel technique for securing cabochons to the surface of a quilt. She also takes the viewers through one of my personal favorites, which she calls “scrumbles” (I call it “mossing” – vive la difference!).
After she covers the stitches, Lyric moves on to discussing the technical aspects of beading a completed quilt (as opposed to beading before the back is applied), giving a nod to the quilt police, who love a neat and tidy quilt back. And then – dare I say it? – actually gluing beads onto the quilt! (I first ran into this particular aberration from another friend, Jenny Raymond, who glues beads onto garments.) Okay, so not something I will be trying anytime soon, but Lyric makes a compelling case for the time saving benefits of glue.
I want to be sure to give a shout out to Bonnie McCaffrey, who was the videographer for this project, and to congratulate both Bonnie and Lyric on a job well done. Both the audio and video were clear and easy to watch and listen to. And I really appreciate the scene selection feature, so that viewers can easily go back to review a particular stitch.
And now for the giveaway part: Someone is going to get a free copy of this DVD, and it could be you! To qualify for the drawing, you need to leave a comment. But not just any old comment. You need to answer this question: If it’s true that anything that has a hole in it is a bead, what is the strangest “bead” you can imagine attaching to a quilt? I’ll draw the winner on Monday, Sept. 19th, and announce it here.
The giveaway will continue through the next few weeks, so if you don’t win here, you can follow the bouncing blogs and keep trying. Here’s the rest of the schedule:
Sept 16 Susan Sorell http://www.creativechick.com/blog/
Sept 19 Kelli Nina Perkins http://ephemeralalchemy.blogspot.com/
Sept 21 Sharon Chapman http://wildflowerhouse.blogspot.com/
Sept 23 Leslie Jennison http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/
Sept 26 Carla Sonheim http://carlasonheim.wordpress.com/
Sept 28 Gloria Hansen http://www.gloriahansen.com/weblog/
Sept 30 Laura Wasilowski http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/
Oct 3 Carol Sloane http://carolbsloan.blogspot.com/
Oct 5 Sue Bleiweiss http://www.suebleiweiss.com/blog/
Oct 7 Jill Berry http://jillberrydesign.com/blog/
Oct 10 Jane LaFazio http://janeville.blogspot.com/
Oct 12 Tracie Lynn Huskamp http://thereddoor-studio.blogspot.com/
Or, you can just dash over to Lyric’s website and order your very own copy here:
http://www.lyrickinard.com/bead_it_like_you_mean_it_.html
Cheers!
Larkin
