My love of Woolfelt and bamboo/rayon felt continues to keep me inspired. Horsetail is a reedy plant that grows in damp soil.....some say it's a nuisance plant.....but since we've been unable to grow it here in the mountains of NC, I don't agree! The color is a bright green with rust and black horizontal stripes. When cut, the green dries to a beautiful tortoise color.
So....in honor of this eye catching plant.....I created a small wall quilt.
First I stabilized a rectangle of bamboo/rayon felt with non-fusible interfacing and added some machine quilting for texture. The stabilizer had been marked with a road map of how I wanted to place my beadwork......you can see above some of the basting lines that served to transfer the pattern from the back to the front. 
The beading was done using a combination of bugle and seed beads.
After the design was completely beaded, I squared the fabric and machine stitched it to a larger piece of 100% (wool) Woolfelt. Both of these fabrics are manufactured by National Nonwovens and are available on their website.To create a visual frame for the motifs and attractively cover the edges, I fused Wonder-Under to black 80/20 (rayon/wool) Woolfelt, cut narrow strips and then fused in position.
Beading was added to the strips for embellishment and to further secure the fabric. Before trimming the edges of the green backing.....I 'bead appliqued' various sizes of matching Woolfelt circles. (See final photo for a closer view.)
Next, the edges were trimmed and beaded which completed the piece less than 2 weeks ago.
Detail
Here Cynthia (a student in one of my workshops at VQF) is bonding with her new piece.....I couldn't be happier that it has a new home in Vermont! 
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