progress on the beadwork

I didn't get as much time in the studio yesterday as I usually do, but I did spend some time working on this

a while back my mother gave me a lot of beads that she had been holding on for for at least 20 years, and I've been trying to put them into projects when it seems appropriate

since this is a tribute to Gee's Bend quilts, this seems like the right place to use some of these

these green beads, for instance, are bugle beads, but they are much smaller in diameter than a normal bugle bead that is available for sale now -- and they are slightly irregular in length as well

usually when I'm doing bead embroidery, I try to make sure that all of the beads run the same direction, but in keeping with the traditions of Gee's Bend, I'm using a slightly different approach for this piece -- some of the beads run one way, some the other, and there are a couple of round seed beads thrown in there too where I needed to fill the space

the more I work on this the more I like it