Beading Crossed Canoes

Remember this mini quilt that I made in June? The crossed canoes inspiration originally came from this quilt that I saw on Laura's blog.
I loved it so much I made it in 2 sizes...my purple one has 1 3/4" canoe blocks (with the 4 sections) and then I made a teal one with 3" (finished) blocks.
But I lost one of the blocks (see this post) and put the project away. This week when I was cleaning (yuck!) I found the lost block (yahoo... the cleaning was worth it!) and decided to finish up this little quilt. And besides, I was stuck on this quilt. I just can't decide how to quilt the borders, so I procrastinated by finishing the canoe mini.
I put these blocks on pointe and then quilted it in the ditch with my walking foot.
The first photo show the proper colouring of the blocks.


Then I did some free motion quilting in the corners...this second photo shows the quilting better, but the colours are washed out.

Once I got the binding on and the quilt was finished, I thought it was a little blah, so I decided to sparkle it up with a bit of beading. Part of the fun for me is visiting with my beads, remembering where I bought those beads, laying out lots of possibilities and deciding what I like best.

In addition to the fun, I also had 2 problems.
When I am beading along and having a great time, I sometimes forget to check the threads on the quilt top as I go, and I sometimes get these little loops from thread knots that result in the beads not being securely attached. So I had to go back and rethread the beads on that block.
Also, I am very hard on needles and always bend a couple when I'm beading quilts or hand quilting.
This is my bent needle jar...see how many I have ruined?!?   Do you have any recommendations for a needle that would stand up to my heavy touch with beading quilts??



I just did a little beading on these blocks so that I would like the finished product a little more.
Another finished quilt!