SRE and Beads on Crazy Quilt (in NP)

This reminds me of someone who is complimented on beautiful hands, but then points out that she needs a manicure - causing the total focus from then on to go to her ragged cuticles. I won't point out the things I'm not happy with here, as the end result isn't really too bad. Having stitched the silk ribbon leaves on the curved seam, the next thing to do was to make the stems - By doing this first, before making the flowers, it's easier to position the whole image. Then the flowers are made - and leaves (chain stitch) placed where they need to be. Again, this is like drawing and painting with the needle and thread - or, in this case, the silk ribbon - 4mm.

I labored for hours, it seemed, making zillions of French knots in the vine - and it seemed a bit heavy until the finishing touches were added to balance the weight - the beads and the little yellow flowers. As usual, nothing looks quite like I envisioned it - it just creates itself and surprises me. The old saying about a bit of yellow in Grandmother's flower garden also holds true in this color scheme - it needed a bit of "warming up."

I stopped with only three yellow flowers, as they would have been "too much" with any more. I had wanted to make a visual "circle" here - with the flowers swirling around - but any more would have been too heavy at the bottom, and too bright. I would rather have had beads without quite so much sparkle, but these were the ones in my stash that were the right color - so there they are! Not too bad. It was just too hot to make a trip to the LNS - and besides, I have resolved to use only the stash items whenever possible. I was looking at the lower right patch last night, with the greenish teal next to it, and struck me that this would be a very pretty color for a warmer, late late summer effect with maybe some orange California poppies on it! Then moving on to fall, I had already put another color scheme into a zip-loc bag that came about by accident - just lying on my table when I was digging around for something else - pretty!! Maybe I'll take a few more days off.