Circle Game Beading

I met Lisa Binkley when we were assigned to room together as faculty at a quilt event many years ago. I’ve admired her work ever since, and have blogged about it from time to time. So I was very excited when the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Art in Cedarburg held a two day workshop with her in November. It was spectacular! Lisa is an excellent teacher.

And her samples were great!

Our kits included a square of hand dyed checkerboard fabric and loads of beads. We began with some basic techniques and stitches.

And then we moved up to more complex patterns. I was happy to have my clamp-on magnifier alongout .

As we neared the end of class Lisa demonstrated a few additional techniques and then encouraged us to come up with some designs of our own.

Her step-by-step sample of “netting” (I think that’s what she called it”) was very intriguing, but I didn’t have a button to try it out on.

So a took a photo of it, and used it to attach a shisha mirror on my own, at home the next day. It isn’t perfect (and the reflection in the mirror center/right confuses the eye), but I was pleased, and I’ll know how to do it better next time.

I also snapped a photo of her sample of this method of beading a button onto fabric,

and was very happy with what I came up with. It was fun to use some of the beads in my collection.

I purchased this cabochon years ago,and enjoyed practicing the peyote stitch as I attached it to the sampler.

It was all finished with a bit of hand-quilting and placed in a frame. I’m so happy to have added some new beading tricks to my toolbox, and I look forward to using them in future projects.

PS The Amish say that they always include an error in their work because only God is perfect. I find it easy to inadvertently have errors in my work 😂. Can you find the fairly obvious error in the image at the top of this post? I chose to leave it that way because I like the way the flower beads dangle.

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I’ve decided to enter my Beaded Sampler in the Winter Quilt Show sponsored by the quilt museum. It’s being held Saturday, February 8th, at the Washington County Fair Park. For all the information click here. It’s always a great show ~ and I hope many of you are able to attend.

There are many fun quilt shows coming up in Wisconsin. Here’s some information about a few of them. Simply click on the name of the show and it will link you to their site. If your guild is having a show not mentioned here, please include it in a comment to this post.

West Suburban Quilt Show – March 14 – 15

Crazy Quilters Quilt Show – March 29-30: 

Wisconsin State Fair – July 31 to August 10 

Great Wisconsin Quilt Show – September 4-6

Lighthouse Legacy Quilt Show in Racine – October 4-5