One of my online quilting friends recently asked a question of her colleagues: whether we’d found adding embellishment had ever actually improved a less successful quilt.  IMHO it doesn’t; any real fixes are those that involve a bit of adding/deleting, unpicking and re-sewing perhaps – but anyway, things to be done before layering, quilting and finishing.  That’s just my opinion though, and there are clearly people out there who’d strongly disagree.

Tidal Shallows 2, 1995, 30inches square. machine embroidered with triple needle metallic thread before assembly and quilting.

Tidal Shallows 1, 1995, 36 inches, entirely beaded with tiny glass beads.

Although I have never gratuitously added glittery charms or doodads, tassels,  shells, teabags and the like, I have extensively embellished several quilts with machine embroidery, typically double or triple needle stitching, and sometimes hand embroidery; but in one notable exception I totally beaded the one directly above, Tidal Shallows 1.  Perhaps I was exhausted after totally beading it, I don’t recall exactly, but I was working on them and another at much the same time, as they all resulted from a coastal holiday to a wonderful part of NW Western Australia.  I feel the quilt was already successfully ‘watery’, although the stronger design of the two, so perhaps that’s why I beaded only that one and didn’t bother beading of further embellishing Tidal Shallows 2.  A viewer of the beaded Tidal Shallows 1 exclaimed “How watery that looks” and so I did feel my decision to go all out and totally bead the quilt  was vindicated – but in no way was it an attempt to improve ‘a less than successful’ quilt.