Rusted darning needle fans block

This is how the block stood the last time I blogged about it, with long loopy stitches and a big mistake in the middle…

And once you spot an error, then it becomes the first thing your eye is drawn to every time you pick the piece up. So the stitching had to come out, but that made it the ideal opportunity to add the seed beads I’d been thinking about.

I threaded them randomly onto each stitch and let them fall into a natural pattern both along the stitch and with the beads on the adjoining stitches.

Then I went back with the same thread and caught the long zig-zag stitches down onto the fabric with tiny single-thread-wide stitches at each end of the bead clusters, both keeping the beads in place and stabilising the long stitches.

You can just about see the little stitches, but for the most part the bulk of the beads hides them quite successfully.

I used some of my absolute favourite aurora borealis matte delicas bought from ebay several years ago. The brownish ones (called ‘Nuts’!) worked so well I’ve decided to use them in the next block too.