We meet at last

I have "known" Larkin van Horn for years—at least 12, I think—but I've never actually met her until today. Larkin lives on Whidby Island in Washington state. Larkin is a member of the QuiltArt listserve that I have belonged to for a long time. I think she was even on the QuiltNet list before that. She is curating the "Good to be Green" invitational show that I'm participating in. I've seen her work, read her words so much that I do feel like I know her. Such is this cyber age! Amazing, isn't it?

She was our guest speaker at today's Columbia Stitchery Guild quarterly meeting and she was excellent. Her forte is beading on fabric. She's written books about this and had a great slide show for us that included both hers and others quilts. After we exhanged a hug and our pleasure at finally meeting face to face, she said, jokingly, to me, "am I ever going to get you to put a bead on a quilt?" I am famously not interested in adding beads to my work, though after an online conversation about this I did accept a challenge to make a beaded/embellished piece. I shared the results here. But something Larkin said in her talk today got me thinking. She said she considered anything with a hole in it to be a bead. Then I remembered this quilt:

I made this about 6 years ago for a challenge for our STASH group. It is called "Rockin' and Rollin'" and those metallic circles you see are all brass washers. I think those qualify as beads under Larkin's definition. I told her I'd send her a photo of it. I guess I am a "beader" after all.