Learning Project: A Berry Cute Addition

After finishing my beaded turtle last week, I really wasn’t sure what I was going to start beading next for my learning project. It’s quite interesting (and all-out creepy) how much your online activity influences the suggested posts, sites, groups, etc once you’ve spent some time searching and researching a specific topic. Thank you, algorithms!

A random bead work post came across my Facebook news feed and it happened to be an indigenous woman with some really cool beading projects that she creates and sells. Her strawberries caught my eye and that’s when I decided I was going to give a strawberry a try! I LOVED the little flower details that filled in the inside of the strawberries. And I loved the variety of colours that she used. I am partial to purples and reds myself so the colours were eye-catching!

I started with drawing my little strawberry shape, but this time I skipped the step of transferring the image onto a piece of plastic. Instead I just traced the strawberry shape directly onto my felt and got started with the outside edge which I decided to use black beads for.

It is quite amazing to me how much easier this project is now compared to when I first attempted my bead work project. I no longer feel stressed as I work my way through the steps. I’m much better at threading a needle, picking up those tiny little beads and much faster at stitching, too. The one thing I need to work on is my estimation in terms of how much thread I will need in order to complete an entire side or space so that I’m not having to stop and re-thread my needle three times!

I mistakenly left my project unattended while I took a “break” to do some cleaning.

{Adult life…the joys are endless!}

I  finished cleaning one bathroom and came down the hallway and spotted something laying on the floor which wasn’t there before I took my “break”. Turns out it was my strawberry!

(Image credit: https://imgflip.com/i/3yx2sn)

My donkey of a cat had jumped up onto the kitchen table and helped himself to my project!

{He’s so cute though!!}

Thankfully he didn’t rip any of the beads off, he just stretched the thread and rearranged a few of the beads. The felt where he had it in his mouth was a little fuzzy, but the open space will be covered with beads and I was able to fix up the spaces where he moved and stretched the thread. Lesson learned there, my friends! Don’t let the cat think you’re creating a new toy for him!

My mother-in-law gifted me a little sewing kit quite a few years ago and it always sits in the utility cupboard in our laundry room downstairs. I legitimately think my husband used the kit more than I did up to this point because he always took it upon himself to sew our boys’ name tags onto their hockey jerseys! But, I feel like I’ve made up for lost time using the little kit during this project! Just recently there was a post circulating on Facebook that had the history of the little tomato pincushion.  I remember my very crafty mother having a tomato pincushion. Turns out I have a mini tomato pincushion in my kit! Talk about an example of the Joshua Tree Effect!

This little strawberry will keep me busy for this week and I now have a number of new ideas saved on my phone, but does anyone have any suggestions for my next project?