Quilting with Beads for Floral Applique

I love applique and I love beading. And I really love it if I can bring those two things together. These are some dimensionally appliqued flowers. They've got all this wonderful dimension to them they're full and thick and kind of real looking but you know kind of fantasy looking too. And I'm building a system of stamens for the center of them. I've already got a few of the stamens in there. I'm going to put a few more in there, and I'm going to show you how I do that. I've got two different types of beads here some small seed beads, I believe these are a size ten. And then I've got some drop or dangle beads. And these have a hole on one end that goes all the way through it. So there's a hole right here that goes all the way through the bead. And I'm going to use that as my cap bead or end bead. And that's the bead that is going to keep the other beads in place. I have two layers, or two thicknesses of nymo, N-Y-M-O, beading thread on a needle with a knot. Now if you don't have beading thread that's okay, if you have hand quilting thread at home you can use that. It's also nice and strong. And that's what you want is just a really nice strong thread. So I'm going to bring this up from behind where I want my next stamen to be. Right here. I'm going to pull the needle all the way through. And then I'm going to load up four of these seed beads. One two three and four. And I'm going to take those all the way down to the base, so that they're down there at the base. And then I'm going to grab one of these drop beads, so you can see how it goes on the needle there. And I'm going to pull that down close to the base but I'm going to hold on to it. Now I'm going to take the needle right back through those four beads. It's not going to go through that dangle bead, just through those seed beads. And then I'm going to pull that thread all the way through. And what it's going to do is it's going to snug that dangle bead right on top of that stack of four beads. And that bead is just going to sit on top like that and it's going to have that nice tall dimensionality. Now from the back I'm going to go ahead and-- don't like that knot there. I'm not sure what's happening with that but I'll take care of that in a minute. I'm going to go ahead and tie a knot on the back here. Because I don't-- if one of these strands were to come off, if I've knotted between each one than I don't have to worry about all of them coming off. Just the one would fall off. While I'm back here since I don't know what's happening here I'm going to go ahead and tie a knot with that loop just so I can cut that loop off. It just means I probably had some fullness between my two layers of thread. There we go. Cut that off. Always the way to fix things. And now I'm going to bring that needle back up where I want another stamen. And I'm going to pull it all the way through. And this time I'm going to put five of the seed beads on. So this one's going to be a little bit taller, not a whole lot but just one bead taller. One two, three, whoops. Four and five. Drop them all the way down to the base, grab one of those end beads hold on to it. Go back through those five beads. And then all the way through the base fabric. And pull that all the way through and snug that cap bead on the top there. And I think that's probably enough of those stamens inside that flower. Knot it off. I'm going to go ahead and tie another knot and do some stamens for these little guys here. So you have that wonderful dimensionality, those things stand up. It's just so cool, it really looks like a real stamen. I just think those are so much fun. And so we get it to stand up by having that tension, by pulling it really really tightly, and by having the tension of that top knot-- or that top bead I mean. Well that's just an ugly knot but we're going to deal with it. So for these little buds, I want that stamen to kind of come out of the center here of that bud. That right there. And I'm going to make these somewhat longer because they're coming out of there and I want them to show well. So I think I'm going to put six of the seed beads on here and see what happens there. There's four five and six. Push it all the way down to the base, grab that cap bead or dangle bead. Hold on to that bead. Whoops. Go through all six of those beads again. And then back through the flower and through the back of the background fabric, and then snug that bead down on there. Oh that's nice. Got that stamen hanging out. Tie a knot. And I'm going to do it one more time for you to see. Coming out of that center. Whoops. Want that needle to come out where I want it to, there we go. And this time I think I'm going to make it even longer. So that it kind of dangles out of there. So I think I'm going to put eight beads on. One two, or did I do eight on the last I can't remember. We'll look and see. I just want it to be longer. So, oh I'm going to do two more. There we go. Then put my cap bead on, my dangle. Not go through it but go through everything else, a second time. Go through the background, go through the flower, and then pull that down, snug that bead on there, and tie another knot and we've got stamens for that little bud. Look at how cool those stamens look just coming out of that little bud there. It's just so fun. This is just a great way to put stamens on flowers. They are somewhat stiff because the tautness that you pull. You get that funky little turnover of that top bead. And it's just-- it's just really cool. So you should give them a try next time you're doing some applique and you need stamens for flowers.