Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Beading at the Bee

Yesterday my quilting bee, the China Dolls, met for the 4th time at Priscillia's house.  This time, everyone was working on different projects.  Since my sewing machine is currently in the shop being serviced, I had to think of some sort of handwork to do.  I decided to bead this photo of a horned lizard.  I had done a similar picture for another project recently, but for that one, I had traced the lizard onto a batik fabric before beading it.  For this one, much more realistic, I printed the image of the horned lizard (or "horny toad" as we used to call them, growing up in Austin in the '50s!) onto my favorite ink jet fabric (fabric sheets which are backed by peel-off paper, so that they can go through ink jet printers), which is made Jacquard . For the lizard pictured above, I emphasized his horns and the most prominent dark markings on his body with brown or amber beads; for the characteristic white stripe down his back, of course I used white beads. I didn't bead the large mark beside one of the horns, however, as then the horn wouldn't have shown up well.  I used a single bead for the eye.  I plan to turn this into a framed picture for the man whose image this is--an image I got from Google images.  I'll perhaps add some hand embroidery and then I'll frame it either simply with fabric strips or perhaps with some small, simple quilt blocks.  Because this image cuts off his tail, I will likely extend his tail into the borders with some additional beads.  I think the beading on this picture shows improvement in my beading-on-fabric ability, compared to the first one I did!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, these horned lizards are not going to win any beauty contests. He is very cute however.
    I can't wait to see the finished product. It looks very realistic.

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  2. These things are so rare now! Remember how we caught them by the score?

    This is very fun!

    Kathy

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  3. Oh he is adorable and I love the added bead work to the photo image on fabric. Nice effect! You are certainly saintly to mail the image owner such a fine finished piece. Fortunate soul. You really up and ran with a good idea.

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  4. Great fun, Alice. I think he looks REAL. Good idea to have the beading emphasize those "horny toad features."

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