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Embellishment Obsession

Janet Stone says she absolutely has to embellish her quilts! But how does she make her embellishments an absolutely integral part of her quilt and not look like an afterthought?

“I truly think about the embellishments and I guess it’s just intuitive as to when something works and when it doesn’t,” Janet explains. “I’ve always had a keen sense of details. I made jewelry in high school and I am a picture framer, which requires a lot of attention to detail. I have a friend who started a bead business shortly before I got serious about quilting, so I’m sure I was a bit influenced by her beads and baubles when I started making quilts. She taught me some intricate beading methods, but I just felt a need to sew things on to fabric!” Janet says she doesn’t really have a fabric stash and buys specifically for a project. For Alphabet Alchemy, for instance, Janet chose batiks that would work with the gold metallic thread she wanted to use.

But beads and embellishments are a different story. “ I love beads, charms, stones, baubles, doodads, you name it! There are good bead shops in my area and I search online late at night for specific beads or embellishments. I also find lots of goodies in the scrapbook department. The brads on the corners of the blocks in Alphabet Alchemy are for scrapbookers. There are also a couple of modern, copper-colored paper clips that came from the office supply section at Target. You gotta keep your eye out everywhere for something that has interesting shape or color that could be used as an embellishment!”

And here’s a technical secret. Each finished pieced block was wrapped and glued around a heavy pellon interfacing before Janet installed those brads in the corner of each block. “ I covered the parts where the back of the brads splay out with a flower cut from of a faux-leather trim. The individual petals of the trim were used in between the prairie points.” Wow, Janet!
Brads and doodads

Gold metallic thread and prairie points

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