I failed daisy beading

Yesterday I attended a beading workshop taught by Mary Stori. Mary was the lecturer at Lake and Mountain Quilt Guilt this month and stayed over for a beginning beading workshop.

It was quite obvious that Mary had taught this class a lot. She was very organized, explained herself well and most importantly wanted us to understand why we were doing what we were doing.

In the photo above you can see the set up Mary used for teaching. I know she taught this class for years with out with this technology and I can't imagine how tough it was for her to have everyone see what she was doing.

She had a camera set on a small tripod that projected her hands, beads and fabric on a screen behind her. This made it great for the student to see everything up close.

I've done very little beading in my fiber art career. Beaded the center of some of my flower quilts. One actually went to Houston several years back. I realized yesterday just how badly I had it was done.

Mary presented the class in two sessions. The first class we made straight lines with seed and bugle beads. My lines are not quite straight, but what do you expect from a beginner? Mary actually taught us a technique to straighten those lines out.

We learned about basic stitches, thread, needles and frames.

This is one of Mary's felted pieces. Obviously she loves buttons but also notice the beaded boarder.

Anything look familiar in this piece? How about those buttons?

In the afternoon class Mary taught a few of her more more difficult designs. This is were I got in trouble. Couldn't figure out the daisy design and I wanted to move on so I let it drop. I think the very next design I missed something she said and again needed help, this time I asked. Mary came over and quickly show me my problem.



As the class progressed I started thinking of many applications where I could use beads.

These are some of my favorite pieces made by Mary. My apologies for cutting parts of some of the quilts off.

I saved my favorite for last. Isn't it just like a (man) to tell us to get a hobby and tell us we're spending too much money. Sorry I didn't get a pic of the whole quilt. You do get that she is in psychologist office, did you notice the crazy quilting along the edge?

Thanks Mary for a great class.