Beaded and blinged; Lauri's romance block

Okay, I tried to do this yesterday and had it all ready to post, when BAM! I rolled the cursor over something I shouldn't have and it all disappeared. Needless to say, I was quite ticked off.

I think I am done with Lauri's block for the CYOT round robin. I have beaded and blinged it more that I have ever beaded or blinged a block before. It now weighs about what Lauri's sample block does, so I'm thinking I must be done. It has lace that we dyed at Lauri's house one day this spring, beads in several colors, a button trail arch (which I'd never done before), and of course, embroidery.

The button arch was a learning experience. Before I had done much of the embroidery, I laid the block flat on the table and positioned the buttons in what I hoped was a pleasing arrangement. Then I did a quick sketch of what button goes where. As I sewed them down, they sort of rearranged themselves just a little, but I liked the way they came out. Sometimes you just have to listen to your embellishments; they usually know best. Except they didn't tell me I should have done the buttons last, as the embroidery thread kept catching on the buttons, and they made the block heavy in that spot and hard to handle.

You might note that our fair lady's purse is lime green, while her dress is purple. One can only assume that the purse matches her shoes and perhaps her belt, neither of which can be seen.

Also note the tiny bee in the turquoise patch. She is about 1/4" long.

The last thing I did on this block is a signature stitch. One of the Colorado Crazy Quilters, Leslie, and I have been thinking about and working on a small motif that we can use on any quilt project to "sign" it without using our names or initials. It needs to be small enough to stitch quickly, and generic enough to fit in with any quilt theme. The small heart in the blue patch is what I am thinking about using. For many years now I've used a very simplified version of that design in counted cross stitch projects, and thought, "A hundred years from now, when one of my projects ends up on Antiques Roadshow, they'll be able to identify it as my work!" Delusions of grandeur....