Here is a vest I did years ago from a silk remnant I bought in Berkeley. There were Ultrasuede spirals left, so they went into a quilt.
This is a detail of the hand stitching and beading.
The background is pieced from a batik and a hand dye. It feels right to be using the stuff that has been around too long.
A friend showed us a scrap quilt she had made where you cut strips of several sizes and many fabrics, then put them in a sack and take them out randomly to sew 7 strips. You start with the 6 lightest sets and after using 3, add 3 more sets. It was fun, and I like the effect I got when I reversed every other strip before sewing it all together. I used 57 fabrics and am thinking of doing another one.
This week's stitch from Sharonb http://www.pintangle.com/ is the Buttonhole Picot in 2 versions. The blue has a Bullion Stitch decorating it; the green chain stitches.
One idea is to extend the picture from a photo or a magazine. It really makes you look. I have a notebook that I've put black and white photos in, because they intrigue me-so graphic.
Leaves are always something I work with, so this picture was perfect to extend. The white dots are stitching. 
A friend had given me the fabric with the silver/gold flowers, because she couldn't figure out what to do with it. It was hard to find something to use with it. Black made it die, most grays weren't right, but I finally found one that worked. I machined the flowers and attached them to create a border around the vest. I have worn it to business dinners.
I wanted to use more of the fabric and cut out three putting interfacing behind them for extra body. The gold leaf trim I had gotten one time shopping with a friend. It was just too cute not to buy. The center panel is raw silk. The outside fabric was in my clothing fabric stash. I used the raw silk again for the binding. It's machine quilted.
This week Sharonb at http://www.pintangle.com/ gave us the Picot Chain Stitch to try. I don't know how she comes up with so many new to me stitches. Worked close, it makes a braid. It also moves in any direction like the regular chain stitch.
In between projects, I've been joining scraps of the violet, green, blue, bluegreen colors. Eventally, I joined the blocks formed and now have a lap quilt. http://www.threecreativestudio.com/ has using scraps as the technique of the month just as I finished this-good timing. I will make something else too-like using scraps.
This time the theme has been Transformation, So I took one of those lovely napkins and used it for the appliques. The greens in the top are silks scraps my German Sister-in-law gave me. The background are my hand dyes.
Here is November for http://www.beadjournalproject.com/ The background is needlefelted on the embellisher then machine quilted with metallic thread. The focal piece given to me by a friend looks like Friendly Plastic in the shape of a belt buckle.
http://www.pintangle.com/ is Sharonb's site where she posts a new stitch each Tuesday for us to try. This is Kiko's Flower Stitch. It combines a chain, buttonhole, and bullion.
I carved some stamps on erasers and stamped them on paper to test the designs. I continued the design around the sides of the spiral one. The left side seems more successful than the right.
The motif that I have been playing with in pieced quilts worked well for a stitched and beaded piece. I did straighten it up to meet as this seemed to need to be formally balanced.
It's a small one-postcard size more or less and folds out when open. The stitched binding forms cross stitches and is easy to do for that decorative effect.
Blogger put this sideways, but I think I like it that way. A friend had a quilt she was working on that she had started with a group at a retreat. It used lots of fabrics which I like to do. I decided to use some of my African stash-thought it would use up more than it did. I think stashes grow at night when we are not there.
The stitch from Sharonb at http://www.pintangle.com/ for this week is the Turkman stitch. One or more Rows worked together make a nice braid. It also was easy to work freely.
I had a good time doing the book just a little at a time.
I found that working on it was very freeing, because it showed only two pages at a time, so each set was an opportunity to try something different.
I call it Envision-not sure were that came from, but it seems to fit.
The cover has molding paste used through a stencil to get the dimensional flowers. The spine is Ultrasuede. 
