It’s a simple truth – beads are a blast!

A quilt is a two-dimensional work of art. Add beads, buttons, or sew-on jewels and you launch it straight into the realm of three-dimensional pizzazz. There are any number of ways to use beads on your project. You can accent special stitches or highlight specific features, such as flowers, figures, baskets, or stars. A few single beads could add dew drops to a leaf, a string of them will quickly draw the eye to any particular part of a design that you want to emphasize.
One of the joys of embellishing with beads is that there is no real need to plan your designs ahead of time. 

You can start by choosing beads of a particular type or color, or even with a random sample of mixed beads, then design as you go! Make beading decisions one at a time as your work develops. 

Start by threading a needle with a single strand of Nymo thread, about 25” long, and placing a quilter’s knot at the end. Start about ½” away from the first bead location an“pop”the knot between the layers of the quilt or quilted garment. Come up at the point where the first bead will be placed. Put the point of the needle into the bead and push it onto the needle with the tip of your finger. The stitch you make needs to be just as long as the diameter of the bead – any longer and the thread will show; any shorter, the bead won’t lay flat. Take a second stitch through every third or fourth bead – if the thread should ever break, two or three beads will come off, but not the whole group. As an extra precaution, run the thread through bigger, heavier beads three or four times. Keep going until you come to the end of your thread and end as you would for a line of hand quilting. If you allow yourself to make one design decision at a time, beading projects are easy to return to after a lapse of time, so interruptions (and don’t we all have them!) won’t be problem.