Addressing Wrinkles, in Fabric

As you may recall from a recent post, I spent Christmas stripping and cheating, in a moralistic sort of way. One of the things I made from leftovers was this:

What does this quilt mean? Maybe nothing, or maybe it had something to do with wrinkles and aging. It's easy to get this far on a quilt. But if you're experiencing adult-onset hyperembellishment disorder, as I am, you need to go further. The next phase took a lot longer:

Vintage pink buttons went in the four corners of the top rectangle. I couched Valdani variegated pearl cotton in the borders. This means that I unspooled the thread and then took conspicuous, primitive stitches at random intervals to hold it down:

I think it looks like sutures. That was an accident.

Next step was to bring it to Starbucks to show my friend Linda, who is as great with accents as she is at finding meaning in random textiles. Linda is also quite the storyteller, and told me about something the distinguished 20th century Russian actress Madame Eugenie Leontovich is supposed to have said  "Dahlink, my wrinkles are my credentials."

Eureka! So I couched this line of beading horizontally to the top, alternating plastic black-and-white letter beads with white glass beads.

(it says 'lines and wrinkles') 

And along the bottom: 

('are my credentials')

I gave the mod person in the middle an alphabetized crow's foot.

In conclusion, my friends, it's a lot safer and cheaper to work out angst about aging with sewing machine stitches, as opposed to plastic surgeon sutures.